Marpha Foundation offers Creative Lessons for government school students between the ages of eight and fifteen. These classes are held daily at our Rosehips Center for an hour and half before the school day starts, as well as during a two-week art camp over the Dashain holiday.
Creative Lessons are emergent and experimental in nature and respond to the interests of the participants. Most of our students come from low-income families whose social mobility is further restricted by inadequate access to quality education. Creative lessons foster curiosity and motivation by exploring content relevant to our specific group of learners and providing an environment where they feel confident to take on challenges and be co-creators in their learning process.
Teaching Fellows take an emergent and interdisciplinary approach. Creative Lessons are filled with experiments, workshops, and projects that explore the arts, natural sciences, physical education, and really anything that students are curious about.
Take the story of Ghooma for example. The narrative of the young wandering cloud that falls in love with a village is the starting point to explore the water cycle, illustration, puppetry and the art of storytelling. Students first learn concepts and reflect on friendship and the environment. By illustrating the narrative as a comic they deepen their comprehension and make the story their own. Simple experiments allow them to explore how clouds are formed. A culminating play with handmade puppets synthesizes weeks of learning and reveals confident learners made stronger by accomplishing so much together.
