Green Classrooms — where possibilities are limitless!
Imagine a younger you, around 10 -12 years old, studying in a classroom surrounded by lush green forests, solving calculus with the background score of birds chirping, answering nature’s call in a composting toilet, or just strolling over a bamboo bridge over a free traveling river to go to your next class. Growing a forest and marveling at the different creatures that you discover because you have given these species a home. Designing and selling your organic recipe book at a farmer’s market and making decisions on which charity to effectively contribute the fund towards. Planting organic rice, nurturing it, harvesting and then cooking it or mud wrestling as your sports activity. Building green houses, creating an alternative energy and being able to curate your own eco-friendly future.
Welcome to Green classrooms and Green schools, where children embark on an educational journey based on nature. The one that allows them to live in the abundance of nature, engage with nature, learn from nature and nurture nature. In our current world of consumerism; climate change, wildlife extinction and threats to forests and our ecosystem are battles of our everyday life. We are constantly making choices that harm our environment and super advanced technology continues to disconnect and distance us from nature. Environmental effects from these choices are causing droughts and producing heat waves causing an ecosystem imbalance. We are struggling with the possibility of a fate that our future generations may not see an Elephant, a Tiger or a Snow Leopard few decades from now. Battlefields and intolerance towards communities is causing the world to shrink and our hearts to grow apart.
Amidst all the destruction and urban chaos, schools like the Green School, Vertical University, SECMOL, Sarang and Naturenomics™ School bring with them a ray of hope. These alternate schools play an important role in countering today’s environmental issues and paving the path for a sustainable future, connecting students to their environment, giving them practical knowledge of the real-world issues such as climate change and rapid destruction of our natural resources, teaching them to plant trees, building renewable energy, organic agriculture, gardening, preserving indigenous knowledge, instilling a sense of community and pioneering diverse and emergent thinking. Creative activities include connecting to local culture, art and heritage of one’s own land and the manifold communities, cultures and countries that students come to these schools from bringing local and global together to an open learning ground.
What’s interesting to note is that each of these schools have their campus on large pieces of barren land that have turned into a lush green forest through the love and labour of the students in these schools. Students in turn benefit from natural and community learning to go on to becoming Green Leaders of our future. Working with an organization that works towards sustainability in the Eastern Himalayas and has education, engagement with nature and community learning as core principles to grow and for the Foundation to be successful in its endeavors, I am fascinated by the concept of educating the young minds through nature in order to create passionate global environmental stewards for tomorrow.
Keeping up with my fascination, during one of my holidays in Bali, I took the time out to visit one such school, the Green School, Bali. I woke up as early as 7am on a holiday, ready to go to school and a 30-minute bike ride later, found myself registering to take a walk through the landscape of Green School. The Green School Bali, founded by John and Cynthia Hardy is giving its students a natural, holistic and student-centered education in one of the most amazing environments on the planet. As I walked through the nature campus on an education trail of exploring the architectural excellence of wall-less classrooms, mud pits and waterfall, listening to the sound of music on bamboo drums and learning about the benefits of community learning and evolving; I am convinced that nature teaches one to be compassionate, aware of one’s ecosystems, to respect and understand our interdependencies and adequately prepare our children for the future that they will inherit.
At these schools, learning is student-directed and discussion based, sustainable solutions are driven through partnerships and collaborations in the real world that contributes to a green economy. Students are empathetic and care for their land and nurture it, they grow a lot of what they eat and produce no food waste. They survey the land and figure out ways by which they can enrich the soil. They inherit secret knowledge of the land from the local communities along with the value of living in harmony with nature. They run wild and free- touching, feeling and breathing nature at all times. When we put nature at the heart of the education system, we nourish children and we allow them to love the Earth, give back locally and lead the future.
My passion for this kind of enterprising nature-based and community inclusive education comes from the fact that in my formative years, I grew up in an environment where formal education was limited to the four corners of a classroom with pre-defined academics and where cultural differences weren’t encouraged. Exposure to a world of limitless possibilities through move to different cities that are a melting pot of cultures, working for organizations that are innovative and futuristic in their vision and through engaging with people with diverse thinking has redefined the education system for me. That thinking calls for a reformed education system modelled on bio-mimicry, ever-adapting and evolving to trends and patterns in nature, fostering interdependent relationships between cultures and communities, adopting 21st century skills like collaboration and problem-solving and being deeply rooted to the environment around us.
If I had to unschool to educate and unlearn to learn, I would get hands on with the natural world rather than read about our ecosystem. I would plant a tree to understand the cycle of life and the language of the Earth. I would follow the flight of the birds and the trails of the animals to understand their movement and how they use the environment in their natural habitat. I would focus on honing my skills rather than assessing my grades. I would celebrate diversity and new thinking rather than limit myself to my perceptions and way of life. I would recreate a part of my childhood to include itchy legs, muddy pants, excited shrills of discovering new forms of life and build my own future to craft my version of a sustainable world through enrolling myself in one of these nature inspired schools — where possibilities are limitless!
For enquiries on nature inspired education and Green classrooms, please write to me at varsha.wadhwani@baliparafoundation.com
