Introducing: Flourish School

As an extension of our alternate-education experiment that started in June 2021, little Baby Bear has been attending an extraordinary experimental school since June 2023. I thought I’d introduce this interesting institute to you folks. Founded and run by Pritika & Saurabh Jain (yes, their own children attend it too), and located in a quaint bungalow in the outskirts of Pune, this school is part of the Acton Academy initiative started by Laura & Jeff Sandefer in the USA to create a learner-first system of education. They have over 400 schools around the world, and Flourish is one of five in India.

Since joining about 8 months ago, Kym has shown remarkable improvement in her ability and willingness to learn, as well as her team-playing and leadership skills. Peer learning and that too, in an environment that is nurturing and understanding of her needs and her pace, can have some fantastic results. And we are seeing them in our lovely child right in front of our eyes.

Soon, this little Bear will be off to a boarding school (perhaps by June 2024), but by that time, we are hoping she’d have built a strong foundation of curiosity about her surroundings, the ability & patience to seek & sometimes find the answers herself, the aptitude & skill to participate & collaborate with others in this quest, and a quiet confidence to hold her own, even while having the self-belief & humility required to learn from others smarter than her, in addition to various life skills like the habit of waking up early and pounding the streets alone to gather one’s thoughts and centre oneself through the day, an appreciation for music & art through piano, a fascination for languages through ISL & Mandarin, a love for animals through equestrian practice, an inclination towards strategy and cerebral activity via chess, and other standard stuff like swimming, cycling, dispute resolution, reading, writing, and mental arithmetic, all of which we have endeavoured to teach her over the past two and a half years.

The really interesting part about this school Kym has been attending (and loving every minute of) is that it uses very gentle and self-driven methods of instruction. Indeed, I would not be wrong to say that they teach the kids nothing but how to learn by themselves. That is, in my belief, the best way to educate a child. Any child.

As for Kymaia, she has become more confident, more social, more vocal, more argumentative (which, given she is Tashuji’s and my child, would have been surprising if she had not by default), more collaborative, less reserved, less shy, less reticent, and in every way, more of everything good and less of everything not. All the stakeholders in Kym’s life are happier, and all is well with the world!

Do take a look. The video is about 9 minutes long, and Kym appears at the 6m:20s mark. As usual, this obsessed father was only waiting to see his beautiful daughter the whole time he watched the film.