The article is about a yearlong effort of our school in bringing
awareness about organic farming among children. Being one of the senior
teachers in Life Science department, I was directly involved in the Nature Club
activities since last five years. My earliest experiences with the Nature Club were
exciting and the response of the students too was overwhelming. They thought Nature
Club was all about outings but the aim and vision of Nature Club was much broader!
That was when I was deputed to a workshop aimed at building capacity of Life
Science teachers and promoting Nature Club activities in schools at the
Regional Museum of Natural History conducted by Mysore Amateur Naturalists. The
fun filled workshop was in fact more serious in its approach and suggested a
lot of activities to be carried back home. The timely association with NGOs rejuvenated
my confidence in teaching profession.
I would like to share this experience of the task of keeping our School Nature
club active and a hub of learning and recreation. Over the past three years my
association with Hasiru Hejje team
has enabled me to shape up our annual Science expos’ in a thought provoking
way. Choosing a common theme for the event and pooling in all possible view
points of other subject teachers were done on highest priority. A number of
projects were thought of in each subject. The students were brainstormed about
the topics and given a choice to select a study project based on their
interest.
In the year 2012 the School chose to name the expo as ‘Vignanamayam’ and I worked a few extra
nights to intensify Natural Science themes in the fair. Keeping Man and Nature
as the central theme, Man Animal Conflict, Land use Pattern Change, Depletion
of Lakes, History of Green Revolution, Natural Farming and Water Foot Print
were chosen as sub themes. With about five projects per theme we were able to
dominate the entire expo. With the involvement of the right resource persons and
agencies we were able to bring in every day issues and present it in a
convincing way. With a main concern to make the exhibition eventful and
appealing to younger class and visiting parents, model making was given all the
push. Clay, cotton rags, papier-mâché and card board were the raw materials.
Plastics and thermocol were consciously not brought onto the work table.
Clay models of snake to help
identification, leopard animal conflict, do’s and don’ts on seeing a wild elephant
in the city limits, statistics about unnatural elephant deaths, effects of using
chemicals in agriculture, collection of native paddy varieties, organic soil
and organic pest control were all the highlights among the sixty projects under a dozen sub themes. The parents and the
public comprehended the efforts and whole heartedly appreciated the efforts of
the Nature Club and it’s in charge. Of course the support from the management
was beyond any honor to an enthusiastic teacher like me.
The students and the school took a long time to come out of the reminiscence
of the success. The event had a slow and percolating effect upon the behavior
of the students. Some students who were shy had opened up a bit, those who were
less attentive to lessons showed better involvement in the class room; the
rouge and bully types became easy to handle even by the non-class teachers and
so on.
The following year the management realized the real outcome of the science
expo and was ready to dedicate more time and money. To me it was not just a
matter of joy but added responsibility. We decided to work upon the theme
statement of the year’s World Environment Day. We named it ‘Aharamrutham’ and started the work much
in advance. Every aspect of food was
considered- the agro-climatic, socio cultural, and techno-economic dimensions.
History of Agriculture, Collection of native varieties of Ragi and minor
millets, Concepts of Permaculture, Poster Exhibition, Farm Visits, field to market, food preservation and adulteration,
nutrients in food, food, food processing, food recycling, food economics were
all envisaged in the fair. Once the students picked up their topics attempts
were made to give them huge amount of inputs and prompted with many possible
ways of expressing their views. Many field visits were arranged for them to
gather information in their respective pursuits. A team went about meeting
vegetable growers around Mysore to learn about their economic endeavors while another
team visited the Defense Food Research Laboratory to know the science behind
making Food for a Space traveller. Another
team visited a pioneering NGO working to promote Organic Farming at Marthalli,
in the foot hills of Male Mahadeshwara hills. The visit to ANISHA- helped our
students pick up ideas and concepts of Permaculture, Growing vegetables on
raised bed platforms, Local varieties of Seeds and their preservation, natural
pesticides and a number of time-tested practices blending with modern Sciences.
Their research plots and the seed bank won the imagination of every student.
This year’s exhibition was in
fact more powerful than the previous year. The students stood proudly in front
of their projects. A model Farm of Anisha and an enormous collection of native
seeds and vegetables attracted one and all. The collection of 56 local
varieties of Ragi including those from Orissa and Nepal were on display.
As though to complete the square
a “Desi food mela”, a Ragi Milk parlor
and a Film festival on issues related to Food and Agriculture were also
arranged during the exhibition. There was a wide coverage in the press and the
School management was impressed by the efforts and intentions of the Science
club. The half a dozen native cows reared by the school and the already green
mind set of the Principal Br. Virijamritha Chaitanya now started thinking real big.
She took a policy decision to utilize every possible space in the school
to develop a kitchen garden. She set afoot at trying out vertical gardening
that is becoming popular in the west. Her home work landed at a Japanese
concept of ‘Curtain Gardening’. The combined effort of the students and the
teachers over a couple of weekends enabled to prepare soil with a copious proportion
of compost to be lifted up to all the four floors in polythene sacs. Seeds of
vegetable and creeper were sown in the bags, early June. By the teacher’s day
on September 5th, miracles had happened.
The school space had not only got greener, cooler and dust free but had
become aesthetically appealing to the students. We could develop a green walk
through about a kilometer long where such space simply didn’t exist. The
students had an opportunity to observe and appreciate the growth of plants and
the insect visitors’ right next to their class rooms. While some students pinch
to taste the buds of certain vegetables they had no taste for while others
police the produce with authority!
Now the school Nature Club, the management and the two NGOs are all
feeling content. They have all teamed
up to keep up their good intended efforts on and ticking. While ANISHA working
in the forest fringes was striving to drive their organic concepts into schools
and younger generation, our school in the city was looking for ideas. The
mediation of ‘Hasiru Hejje’ which works with both the distant agencies is
trying to help the ideas materialize for them.
This year the partnerships are indicating much better yields for the Nature
Club. Our Principal has made personal visit to ANISHA and met up with Rajan and
Valli who run the center. She speaks of all the things she saw there first
hand. Permaculture, low input agriculture and sustainable lifestyles are the
catch words in the campus vocabulary. Now
the responsibility of the Nature Club is the fourth floor to experiment with
the concept of cultivating in raised bed platforms with permaculture
techniques. All the sacks in along the corridors have now been connected with
drip irrigation and needs very little care.
Never did I think with Biology teaching, I would learn so many things in
life. It is probably the time spent with children outside the classroom and the
text books; time spent in meeting people and knowing things to tell my
students. During the parents meeting, some are taking the stairs to the upper
floors off to appreciate the green curtain. Some even make enquiry for
vegetable seeds. ‘Yes the bug is
catching up!’ Exclaims our Principal ‘the school is getting greener and it must
radiate across’.
Geetha H
PGT in Biology
Amrita Vidyalayam, Mysore
