OYE KIDS…A new way to learn

Monday (June 8) was not a usual day for the kids at The Yenepoya School at Jeppinamogaru. They were shown cartoons, few interesting video clippings, unlike as in the case of regular schools. They didn’t hesitate to tell the answer to any questions posed on them. It was full of fun, excitement, fervour and enthusiasm, thanks to the model of parallel schooling brought up by Mangalore based not-for-profit organization Centre for Integrated Learning (CIL). The kids were left absolutely free to think in the way they felt comfortable.

Kids at The Yenepoya School had the chance to watch their favourite cartoon characters – Tom and Jerry – on the big screen along with their friends. They also watched some kids doing funny things on screen.  

Kids were shouting with great joy and fun as Nandagopal S, the convener of CIL, walked through the kids’ groups and taught them many lessons on science to humanity with the audio visual aid while the kids were watching the pranks of Tom and Jerry.

It was the launching day of Open Your Eye Kids (OYE KIDS), a ten-month programme, planned by the Centre for Integrated Learning, Mangalore. It has now been launched as an After School Programme at The Yenepoya School.

OYE Kids: What’s this?

If you were a student of any traditional or conventional school, you might well remember as to how you were taught the spelling APPLE. You were asked to write the letters A-P-P-L-E many times and the teachers made it sure that you have by hearted the spelling. But, unfortunately, most of the teachers did not find enough time to bring an apple to the class, show it to you (when you were a kid), tell you what it is and then teach you its spelling. Rather you were just shown the picture of an apple and then you were asked to learn its spelling. It is the way every conventional school adopts to teach its students.

But the kids at the ‘OYE Kids’ programme learn the things in an entirely different way. Since the experiential learning through hands-on activities has been one of the successful approaches of CIL, the OYE Kids programme too employes non-conventional and practical oriented teaching methods.

“It is not very effective to teach a child the spelling of an Apple by merely writing A-P-P-L-E on the board. However, if the child is made to understand why it is spelt that way or if it is shown a real apple during the teaching process, the exercise can be more rewarding” says Sachitha N, Director, CIL.

These are the days where an intense discussion on alterntive schooling that can effectively teach the kids about human values and basic life skills is going on in the intelligentisia. And the CIL in association with The Yenepoya School, a new generation unorthodox school that has given a new learning experience to Mangalore, has come up with the OYE Kids programme.   

This programme is a non-conventional mehod that aims at teaching the kids about basic skills such as cooperation, leadership, language skills etc and also make the kids to inculcate human values.

“OYE Kids aims to provide additional inputs to children with the aim of improving their overall skills and also developing values that would be carried forward. The programme, though academically limited to ten months, is in fact an ongoing learning process that has to be cherished by the kids throughout their life” says Nandagopal S, Convener of the CIL and a prominent resource person for the programme.

“This [OYE Kids] is only a launch pad for developing a personality in a child which the society looks towards” he adds with a smile of confidence.

For the kids at The Yenepoya School the CIL has developed certain strategic ingterventions to incorporate in the OYE Kids programme which include Hands-on experience, exposure through field visits, group dynamics, facilitation for developing personality (soft skills), individual attention and regular appraisals to assess progress.

OYE Kids programme at The Yenepoya targets mainly the kids of 1 to 4 standard. To escalate the confidence level among the kids the programme has resorted to activities that interests the kids and thereby teaches them certain skills such as language skills, personal skills and social skills.

When contacted, Junior Programme Leader of The Yenepoya School Reshma Nayak explained about the Oye Kids Programme: “Our effort is to give a complete learning package to the kids and make their childhood complete. It is an attempt to bring the kids out of mere text book learning.”

Here, some of the younger kids follow elder kids and some of the elder kids follow the younger kids which make them to understand the concept of working in a group and being cooperative, she adds.   

“The skills will be taught through an array of activities that include origami, clay modelling, dramatics, interactions with personalities, field visits, public speaking, dancing, singing, gardening, creative writing” says Nandagopal S, adding “the kids will be devided into groups and each group will have distinct identities so as to bring in the sense of community feeling among the members (children) of the particular groups. We would also seek to instill a competitive feeling between the groups, which would seek to foster targetted growth of both the individual and the group.”

The CIL has plans to extend the same programme to other schools too, if they get a request for it. The kids after they complete their OYE Kids programme will be given a certificate from the CIL based on their performance throughout the programme, Sachitha explains.

“Once we build a new generation of individuals with such values and skills we also intends to take the programme to economically impoverished students by using the resouces of senior OYE Kids programme members so that the poor kids will have the chance of opening up their eyes to new horizons of life” concludes Nandagopal. In other words, CIL plans to take the same kind of programmes to Government and rural schools as well in due course so as to provide the much needed exposure to the rural kids.

[This report was published in City Herald supplement of the Deccan Herald dated June 13, 2009]

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