Heritage School
This morning after breakfast I gave myself plenty of time (90 minutes) to get an Uber to the Metro, ride out to the end and then get an Uber to the Heritage School in Gurgaon. The ride on the Metro will not be forgotten soon, although it is likely to be repeated. OMG was it crowded. After passing up two full trains, I just pushed with everyone else and got on the next one. Only to find out it terminated early so I had to do it again. Fortunately all the exits for the rest of the ride opened “on the left” so I was relatively un-jostled from “my” space. Getting the Uber from Huda City Center was really crazy, wherever “Gate 4” is I have no idea, but kudos to the driver for finding me.
Was it worth all the trouble to head out to this school? ABSOLUTELY.
The Principal was very generous with her time, we had a great chat that I could have continued for hours and I was given permission to visit classes and roam the halls. I’m thrilled to be able to go back there again tomorrow (whenever I decide to wake up; sorry kids but if I don’t have to get early, I don’t want to!).
I took loads of pictures of lots of the bulletin boards, I think they speak for themselves. Scroll way down after them to see the cutest student toy inventions and more classroom action.
Some more views of the attractive and huge school: 3000 students in K-12 with a very large faculty.
After being treated to a pretty good Indian lunch, I was taken out to where the students were presenting their home-made toys that demonstrate some physics ideas. The school organizes its curriculum around themes and the kids were so into making toys that they did them as homework and gave up some of their lunch time to share them. You can see that everyone was having fun.
After lunch the students were led to a robotics lab where they were just enthralled to assemble a model dragonfly with legos. It wasn’t an easy assembly, but the students stuck with it, working in groups of three. Amazingly, they are learning this in the context of biomimicry, a concept I am so passionate about myself. I’ve often sent kids to asknature.org to get inspiration and here is a school that “gets it”!
After that I was able to visit two more classes, one which started with allowing a student who was absent to present his toy to the class. He had made a boomerang that had three different settings, which he demonstrated to enthusiastic applause. See for yourself.
The teachers led the students expertly and joyfully through writing and reading tasks, with conscious guided reflection before and after each activity. WOW.
This is the “book” the students were reading, annotating and discussing!
A look outside the window…
There were a fleet of busses to take the students and faculty home and I was able to catch one to the Metro station. The ride back was much less crowded, by getting on at the start I was actually able to get a seat- but it was competitive!
What follows are random pictures of me walking and totally getting lost trying to find my way back to my guest house. I was using Google Maps and I had to turn around and retrace my steps more than once before I found my comfortable little neighborhood! Looking forward to seeing and learning more about the Heritage School in the days to come.
