When I decided I wanted to teach and dedicate a significant part of my life to students, learners, and curious minds, I was in my early 30s, reasonably well settled in a media career in Bombay. I did not know what I would teach. I did not know how I would teach. I did not know where I would teach!
All I knew was that I wanted to interact with students. It was this deep desire that made me forsake what would ostensibly evolve into a successful stint in ‘Bollywood’, perhaps including directing a film or two, and move back to my hometown in Jaipur. Why move back? Because crossing this existential bridge in the Maximum City is painfully expensive. And because having been away from home for the better part of two decades, I suspected, quite strongly, that a return home would help centre me.
Perhaps a cosmic conspiracy played its hand when, during the first school summer holidays since returning to Jaipur in the winter of 2013, a friend graciously hosted a fairly rigorous Communication Skills Workshop with her own high-school daughter & son, and a few of their peers, at her primary school.
That month-long workshop was twelve years ago! It is difficult, if not impossible, to encapsulate my journey into and out of Education since. Suffice it to say that the years have brought wisdom, understanding, insight, and a clarity of purpose. That, truly, my entire teaching & mentoring endeavour has been a uniting of two profound influences in my own life. First, a deeply emotionally deficient relationship with my biological father has led to a fractured self-concept. Second, and subsequently, my Master's at The Doon School, which didn’t serve merely as subject-teachers but rather as life-mentors, creating an environment of completely uninhibited self-exploration, and then a self-exemplified ethos (not a preached or theoretical one) which espoused courage of conviction, to doggedly pursue passions one had unearthed through the aforementioned self-discovery!
More recently, and in case you’re wondering why I am essaying a mini-autobiography, I have had the privilege of knowing Jugjiv Sir and Sandeep Sir. Sandeep Sir is someone I have known for many years. At some point after my return to Jaipur, he’d generously invited me to The Fabindia School, where I was most struck and inspired by the incredible work he’d done. Would have loved to visit and interact routinely with the students had it not been for logistical limitations. Jugjiv Sir, I met more recently in the context of another education-allied project. And as I became more invested in the work that My Good School (MGS) has been doing, the plans & projects that are active, the vision of the organisation, the collaborative spirit of the cohort, I got the same feeling I did, many decades ago, as a young student at The Doon School, all over again. I could feel palpable excitement from these two senior gents, who were refreshingly exuberant and passionate, untarnished by life's numerous drudgeries and challenges. It awakened a renewed sense of purpose in me, and a small step they allowed me to take was to start a series of interactions at and through the Sunday My Good School sessions.
Those have been some of my most memorable sessions, and, if I may say so myself, amongst the literally hundreds I’ve mentored now across schools, NGOs, colleges, and hallowed institutions like the NIFT and the Indian Institute of Crafts & Design. Why? Because the children who attend these sessions of The Sunday School, their investment, their ingenuity, their self-motivated zeal, their hunger & curiosity, are infectious. Because all the external resources and domain-experts who associate with MGS bring with them, in addition to the given heightened subject-awareness, a sincerity that is nowadays seldom seen. And because the manner in which this entire entity is in singular service to ensuring quality education to those who need it, and arguably deserve it the most, is intensely inspiring.
I am so honoured to have been made a member of the alliance and look forward to contributing in several ways. I’d be lying if I didn’t share my recent and growing dismay looking at any number of the allegedly ‘best’ schools out there. Now, however, with MGS, I am of renewed hope, vigour and purpose.
Kartik Bajoria is a member of the Good Schools Alliance #JoyOfGiving is a Jaipur-based Writer, Educator, & Mental Health Advocate
