The Learners Garden, Ubud, Bali, Indonesia

Classes – Taman Siswa (The Learners’ Garden)

What I offer at the moment for children is three days per week at 4.5 hours per day. I believe this is enough for children to attain essential academic skills, have their whole person engaged, be social with other children and have time to pursue activities that interest them.

The philosophy of my schooling is to create a space for the students to self-actualise and develop a pluralistic consciousness. My method is to hold a space that is intentional has clear goals. There are two intentions through the day.

Intentions
#1. To engage and affirm the students. The goal being students develop a positive association with learning and to cultivate self confidence. I call the lessons Integrated.

#2. To learn useful academic skills. In this part of the day I make the learning visible. It’s limited to literacy and numeracy and each student has an individual plan. I call these Learning Lessons.

The children participate in integrated lessons during the first two hours of each day. The lessons are cross-curricular, feed the whole person and are student centred.

By whole person I mean I challenge the children with 4 lines of enquiry: physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual.

By student centred I mean I choose themes based on a continuum of human consciousness development. I have identified the culture of childhood and use that to choose my themes.

We then have a half hour break. I encourage the students to bring a little snack.

The last two hours is dedicated to learning important academic skills in Literacy and Numeracy.

I focus only on skills that are essential for them to succeed in life. The students feel like the lessons are purposeful and achievable.

Students have an individual learning plan that I facilitate them self-managing. Including choosing the skill to learn, how they will learn the skill and how they will demonstrate they’ve learned it.

The fee is Rp1mill (~US$75) per week.

The 12-hour school week means the children have plenty of time to follow their own interests and to spend more time with their families.

I cater for children between the ages of 6 and 14 with groups no bigger than 10 students.

The classes are conducted in two locations in Bali: Ubud and Mengwi (near Canggu).

Camps
I host day camps twice per year in August and December/January. The intention of these camps is to connect children with their peers and to give them an experience of my philosophy. I do this by creating a space for young people to have a whole person thematic experience in the morning and a science experience in the afternoon. The afternoon’s activities will be punctuated by open time for the students to pursue their imagination. I break this up with an hour-long lunch break and games. The camps run from 9am to 3pm daily for 2 weeks.

Email: info@internationalmentor.org