Reena Ginwala If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured and far away… – Henry David Thoreau We become parents by default. Today we know better than to take our role of parenting for granted; lest the joyful opportunities for celebration and personal growth pass us by and the threats loom larger than they may actually be. Did we know that parenting would be a unique opportunity to witness the life of our own precious creation? That our children would be the driving force for all the choices we make? Parenting is a phase in which our daily lives are a combination of ups and downs, pulls and pushes at such an intimate and intense level that parenting is no longer a phenomenon of choice. ‘Once a parent always a parent’: our energy, skill sets, conditioning, creativity and innovation define our own experience and the impact we make on our children. I feared my destiny, until I realized that I had the power to change my life. I feared change, until I saw that even the most beautiful butterfly had to undergo a metamorphosis before it could fly… – Author Unknown As a mother of three daughters, one of my most important missions was to create a learning environment which would be a combination of the nurturing environment of a home and the challenging environment of a school. Homeschooling was the obvious answer, and I even felt excited and confident of taking up that challenge! However, my need for financial independence as a single parent did not allow me the luxury of staying at home to ‘teach’ my daughters and explore the world of science, arts, languages and more with them. Thus began my journey to guide them on their search for knowledge through the least ‘damaging’ schools, fearlessly changing schools if I found a better alternative. I believe a good school can offer a healthy, creative, encouraging and intellectually stimulating atmosphere for a child to explore various facets of life, as she steps into the real world. It can offer a non-judgmental space to children, to make mistakes, learn from the outcomes and be responsible as well as emotionally strong. It may not be able to offer complete protection from conflicts, accidents, failures, and unnecessary exposure as a nurturing home can. I hoped to inculcate values of honesty, empathy, co-operation and commitment

Arun Elassery There are fast-moving white cotton-puff clouds in the bright blue Bangalore sky and through the big window I can see that it’s a beautiful windy day outside. I am sitting in my home-office from where I manage SeasonWatch, an India-wide tree monitoring program for school children, which brings in just enough income for the family. Teacher Plus asked me to write an article about homeschooling and every day for the last month or so, Dinkar, my 10-year old and I have been writing one story each and sharing it with the family in the evenings. Today, I thought I’d combine these two requirements and write an article-story about our homeschooling day. As it often happens with us, all five of us are at home. So let us go around the house and see what the others are up to. In the children’s room, Aditi, our 16 year old, is watching Bharatanatyam videos on YouTube. Aditi is interested in dance but her first love is photography and she is always experimenting with her high-end DSLR camera. The camera is a gift from her aunt for doing well in her NIOS 10th board exams last year. Aditi maintains a photo blog and many people like her work. Dinkar, who unlike his brother and sister, has never been to school, is sitting on the floor behind Aditi and drawing something. He learnt to read only when he was eight years old but he has been sketching and painting from a very young age. He has a knack of representing scenes with very few lines and he likes drawing cartoons with speech bubbles. On the dining table, Srikant is reluctantly going through his 7th standard Hindi textbook, which he should have finished two months ago before the end of the last academic year. For two years now, Srikant has been studying completely on his own, but today Kanti is sitting with him to ensure that he does not quietly move to the baithak and curl up with the Terry Pratchett novel that he has obsessively been reading. Kanti has taken time out of her busy schedule to sit with Srikant. Her time goes in advanced level cooking, such as the multi-grain sourdough bread that she baked for breakfast today, or in experimenting with the technologies of growing things for our kitchen on our sunny balconies, or in stitching professional looking clothes for the family, or in the hundred other simple things that keep our household ticking and