About Riverside
The Riverside School is a co-educational school founded in 2001 with the explicit goal of bringing the focus back on primary education. Over the last six years, Riverside has implemented a "common sense" approach to education,
placing the interests of the students before everything else. As a consequence of this over-riding focus on the student as the stake-holder, Riverside has evolved a set of processes that ensure that the student is an active participant in the learning process and is empowered to decide how and what (s)he wants to learn.

JAAGO!
Jaago, a street-play whose video is featured here, is part of a unit called Great Speeches in History which students of grades 5 and 6 were studying. As part of the unit, they were exploring how words could influence the world around them. On the occasion of Gandhi Jayanti, the students (who were studying Gandhi's speeches as part of the Great Speeches unit) observed that if words were indeed so powerful, they could increase their "circle of influence" beyond the parent community (which is involved in the students' learning on a regular and constant basis).

A street-play was chosen to be the vehicle for this outreach. The street-play allowed the students to perform before a live, unknown audience. It was staged at multiple locations across the city, cutting across multiple profiles and socio-economic classes, and the students received a varied response, depending on where the play was staged.

The Learning
The exposure of performing in public, of attracting an audience to their play in the corner (or middle!) of a busy street, of holding their attention throughout the duration of the play and provoking the audience into responding (as can be seen in the video) were invaluable for the children. Events such as Jaago build confidence in children and deepen their understanding of what they are learning. The students learn to improvise and think on their feet. Any event held in public view brings to bear intense pressure on the 'actors'. Learning how to discipline oneself to keep to the script and effectively convey one's message is a significant lesson to learn. As can be seen from the video, the Riverside students were adept at it.

How they manage it
The success of units and activities such as Jaago is predicated on extensive and detailed teacher planning. This unit involved extensive collaboration between teachers across various grades, both in terms of design and conception. This form of collaboration is the norm at Riverside, and allows the teachers to design units that involve the students and lead to enduring understanding.

Words of Wisdom
"A school's larger responsibility to society is to shape sensitive and responsible individuals. In effect, a school ought to be the breeding ground for citizenship. Efforts such as Jaago make the students aware of the society they are part of and empower them to make intelligent choices in their life."

It certainly appears that Riverside is on the path to shaping young minds to be such citizens!