Little hearts and a feisty teacher

Self-determined learning is the phrase Dr Stewart Hase uses to define Heutagogy. He is the founder of ‘Heutagogy’. The students are the self-teachers and the classroom teacher is only a facilitator and guide in this process of learning.

September 26 is celebrated as ‘World Heutagogy Day’. Chris Kenyon and Dr Stewart Hase found out this method as they were working on another project of learning. The objective of this method of learning is that it makes a student a complete human.

Once this method of learning is implemented at the elementary level the pupil will start his process of a lifelong journey of learning. The method of learning is determined in the child’s life.

He will learn everything in his life through this method. Dr Stewart Hase and Chris Kenyon brought out this concept in 2000. Further developing it Dr Hase has done much more work and now this method stands workable and had yielded good results. 

Now we will talk about a self-determined teacher Vijayabhanu Kote, who is working in a government school in Payakaraopeta, Visakhapatnam, who have adopted this method in her class.

As an academician and also an individual with the social responsibility she contributes different articles to the government journals Yojana, and also writes biology lessons for Class X students in Eenadu and English lessons to Kasturi magazine. Besides this, she is also a creative writer and poet in English and Telugu. She wrote stories in Telugu, which are published in reputed magazines like Prasthaanam and Swathi Weekly.

At first, she experimented with heutagogy with Class V student and now she is doing it confidently with Class I students too. She has designed modules of Heutagogy. As a teacher in the Government school it is really an adventurous decision for Bhanu Kote, but as she is a self-determined teacher, she has successfully implemented her modules in her class.

In a small town Payakaraopeta, the students are from very poor and disturbed families. To put them all to such learning process is a herculean task. And this teacher had taken the total responsibility on her shoulders and done it. Her colleagues and the education board are in awe of her and are surprised with the results she brought out. 

In this module, the students’ day to day learning is recorded by students themselves in their own words and pictures. This dedicated teacher with the financial help of her friends published the book titled ‘Letha Akaasalu’ (Tender Skies). 

As she succeeded in her effort with her first experiment, all the teachers from other schools started inquiring about this concept. She taught them and also started writing on this subject in the magazine “Naveena Vidya”. She gives her self-assessment as a successful person implementing this method.

Wherever she goes there’s a lot of progress in that school by all means. She takes up the responsibility of constructing boundary walls and pooling up computers, furniture, and sports material and a lot more to the school in which she works.

She had been working in the Mandala Parishad Upper Primary School, Patha Harijanwada and now she is working in the Mandala Parishad Upper Primary School, Kotta Harijanwada in Payakaraopeta.

She says that this method of learning makes a student prosper throughout his lifelong learning process and they will turn into a self-fulfilled individual. Her students conduct many awareness and social programmes too.

Her achievements won her great applause and she was invited to Finland to present a paper on her experiments in heutagogy. She successfully presented her paper ‘Heutagogy for Primary School Children and Triangle Concept’ in the Global symposium conducted by the Council for Creative Education at Tampere University, Finland in November 2017.

More than 60 countries attended this symposium and the same paper was simultaneously selected for TECH Global Symposium and she presented her paper in Vizag in December 2017.  Presently, Vijayabhanu is working with Dr Stewart Hase and his team in preparing the handbook for teachers on Heutagogy. She says it’s a grand privilege to work with the founder of ‘gogy’. -The author is a bilingual writer, translator, critic and columnist.