Step by Step School in Delhi

I want to be sure to highlight the new Step by Step school in Delhi which Matt and I think could soon be the very best school in India. This school is an Indian school - not an international school. The mastermind behind the school is its foundress, Abha Adams. She is a renown educator in India - so much so that when she opened the school last year, people came running to enroll their children. the school today is only one year old and already has 1025 students!! She is the petite woman on the left of the picture below - don't let her small stature fool you - she's a real force (I had to race to keep up with her school tour)!!

Currently, the school is k-8 but plans to grow to 2500 students in k-12. The campus is still under construction but will soon fill the 10 acre site with state of the art facilities, athletic areas and a center for Faculty Professional Development. It's such a happy space which encourages creativity in children- note the slide in the picture which goes between two floors. We had a fascinating conversation with the school administrators about how India is such an exam driven country and how teenagers are under terrible pressure to do well on the national exams. This school embraces a much more inquiry-based learning philosophy and encourages children to be independent thinkers who realize the importance of giving back to their communities. It's a very new methodology in India but Mrs. Adams and her team are convinced that students should enjoy learning and that education must change because our world has changed (sound familiar?). It was SUCH a dynamic conversation! I recommended the documentary 2 Million Minutes to the administrators and asked them to let me know their thoughts (we'll be watching it at UA soon with our Global Book & Movie Club).

I so appreciated Mrs. Adams talking about the challenges of helping her faculty embrace a totally new and alien teaching style. The fact that the school is building a faculty development center on the campus speaks to the commitment to faculty learning - so excellent!!

One last thing to mention about Mrs. Adams is that she has been very involved with a program to build global understanding through music. The Carnegie Foundation (& Carnegie Hall) sponsored this project which linked 16 classrooms in New Delhi (which is btw, the same as "Delhi") with 16 classrooms in New York. How cool is this school???