Parindey: Nikita Tathed and Harshad Tathed
Alivelihood: Child and Youth Mentor, Educational Entrepreneur
Region: Pune, Maharashtra
“Alternative education is not about educating children but educating parents, because children haven’t lost their free selves entirely like parents. So, our efforts should be directed to deconditioning the parents’ minds.”
- Harshad Tathed
Nikita and Harshad, a young enterprising couple, are working towards building a holistic model of education through multiple initiatives, while parenting, unschooling and educating their 5-year-old, Akshay. They are constantly learning from him and all the other children they have worked with. They together run a learning centre ‘Swayambodh Gurukul’ across 3 locations in the Moshi and Bhosari neighbourhoods of Pune. Apart from that, they have initiated other projects like Colour Bugs, where drawing and craft-related skills are imparted and students are prepared to enter these fields professionally, and Project Nomad, a film and podcast production focused on covering different models of alternative education being practiced in the country. They are also a part of a local programme Udayan Shalini Fellowship that provides scholarships to girls from high school to graduate levels. It is a voluntary engagement where they facilitate the selection process. In addition, Harshad is currently engaged as the High School Development Head at Swadhaa Waldorf Learning Centre, and works with his alma mater, Priyadarshini School in the capacity of a consultant.
While they came together through marriage in the year 2017, Nikita and Harshad shared similar life experiences that shaped their lives. Coming from families with financial constraints, they both started earning at a young age and built their careers around arts while having educational degrees in a different field. Harshad graduated in Pharmacy but started his journey in the education sector through drawing classes. Nikita was a commerce graduate with a deep passion for dance, which she learnt and taught simultaneously. The philosophy of Swayambodh Gurukul in its current form has been drawn from their individual and shared life journeys. They have made their own decisions in life while navigating with uncertainties, experimenting and exploring to find their own answers to the complexities of life and build a unique life path. Hence, the name bears the word Swayambodh or self-realisation. They intend to facilitate a learning environment where children are guided by ‘self’ and create their own path while making empowered choices.
Harshad started a coaching centre ‘Study Hubs’ in Bhosari in 2015 for his primary source of income. In the next two years, he pursued the Teach For India Fellowship and Jagriti Yatra. These two learning journeys were instrumental in shaping his perspective on education. He observed and understood that lower scores did not reflect a child’s incapability to learn, rather it indicated gaps in the child’s ecosystem or teaching methods. The transition from marks-oriented coaching to holistic learning was enabled by the children, and the centre was renamed Swayambodh Gurukul in 2017. The first challenge came up when a batch of 10 students who had failed the 9th-grade exams were enrolled. The existing methods of teaching did not work. At that time, the students enabled Harshad to understand how they would like to learn, and what captured their interest and attention. He realised that the students learn joyfully when there is trust and faith in the process. The approach involved trust building, invoking curiosity and independent inquiry through games and activities that were conducted periodically. All the children cleared the exams after a year. In Harshad’s words, “We start working from the heart, not from the head.”
In 2021, during the COVID-19 period, Nikita started helping the children in her society with their studies during the examination. When she revisited the academic concepts and interacted with children, she found a huge disconnect between learning and one’s daily life. The motivation and investment of teachers at school were low, and parents were completely closed to listening and understanding the children’s concerns. According to Nikita, the parents did not know what the child was doing at school or in the class. They were only focused on the marks, but not connecting with what was going on in the child’s mind. The children were in mental and emotional distress which moved her to take up this challenge and address the situation. She decided to hold regular classes after being inundated with requests from the parents. The results grew within six months, and they started a new centre in Moshi in 2022.
The learning centre has reached out to 300 children in the last six years and currently caters to 120 students across all locations. The group of students is diverse and includes children going to school, children who have dropped out from school, children with intellectual and learning disabilities and those who have failed the 9th-grade exams. A holistic approach to learning is followed that involves monthly meetings with parents, focus on diet, physical exercise, sleep patterns and overall health, maintaining individual progress records of each child, their needs and strengths across different areas, and imparting concepts through real-life references that children can relate with.
The challenges faced in this journey often come from parents and teachers and their fixation with marks and academic success. It is also difficult to find teachers who are willing to give up the conventional role and adopt their approach. Therefore, the students who have passed are now working as teachers in the learning centre. They have a total of 10 team members and are hiring more to reach their vision soon. There is growth and expansion, but it also implies that the personal and social lives of Nikita and Harshad keep on shrinking. However, the impact that is being created motivates them to keep going. They are bringing joy to the children and parents, as their family relationships are improving and slowly becoming harmonious. Apart from improvement in scores, the children are taking ownership of their relationships and showing leadership in life. They are moving from a space of conflict to understanding. Many of them have started making small earnings which has helped them out of poverty, enabled them to support their education and plan their future.
Nikita and Harshad envision building an inclusive school where all children with and without disabilities can learn and grow together and create a community of joyful people. They sense a need to work on joyful parenting in this age where mental health crises have become pervasive. Therefore, Harshad intends to work with parents, teachers, and children together and reach out to 10 lakh children in the next 10 years by establishing a multiplicative model, where his students will reach out further to more people and bring change as young entrepreneurs. The aim is to prepare more young people in education who feel empowered by empowering others. In achieving this vision, the values of respect, perseverance, openness to new ideas, acceptance of different viewpoints, and valuing people’s efforts hold an integral place for Nikita and Harshad. Nikita also envisages an intergenerational community space where elderly people, vulnerable children and youth can find support and nurturance from each other’s lives and experiences. Their son, Akshay, is growing up in a rich family environment with his grandparents on both sides. Nikita feels that he has learned more by observing and experiencing than she could ever teach him. So, he decides what he wants to do and learn, and as parents, Harshad and Nikita will simply facilitate and support his engagements. In the future, they want to travel together as a family, visit natural landscapes, forts and beaches, go on treks, and explore local festivals and cultures of different places, so that he can learn by seeing and experiencing the world.
Nikita and Harshad can be reached at:
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