Table for art room

Flat tables dont work for art rooms as a certain inclination is required to draw. Good to know that such tables are now available in the market. Saw such a table at a Indus World School, Indore.

Principal's Room

Have written about my larger thoughts on Principal's room in my book 'To, The Principal'. Out here I would like to talk about just one good office I happened to be in recently.


Met with Mukesh Shelat, Principal of Millennium School, Amritsar. Its an unusual office. Though I dont like huge Principal offices, I liked this one despite it being pretty large.

The office just has a conference table with chairs around. At the head is Mukesh's chair. Which if turned around works as a office chair as he works on his small workable workstation on the wall.(see pick below with Mukesh on the head of the conference table and his laptop behind on his workstation on the wall)


A complete change from a huge desk type (Babu type) Principal's workstation...which apart from files has pen stands and what not. It speaks a lot about how the school is a departure from babudom.

Waste water troughs at drinking water points

There is a lot of waste water generated at water points in schools as students drink water and there is unavoidable spillage. This water usually channeled to the drain can alternatively be channeled to the nearest flower bed or at least stored for appropriate usage later.

Picture alongside is from a rural school in Ropar, Punjab which has made troughs below the water points and the water collected in these troughs is then channelised to the flower beds alongside. As part of the Green Schools Programme of CSE, they blocked the outlet of these troughs and found the volume of these troughs to find out the amount of water reused by the school.

In city schools, water coolers are usually at the same location on each floor…water outlets from these can be channelised into a common tank.

Wash basins in pre-primary classrooms

Early Childhood Education involves a lot of work around fine motor skills and as children develop these skills they are bound to spill and get their hands dirty. Every pre primary teacher knows that the kids have to make a line and go to the washroom everytime they do an art activity.

It is with this regard that many classrooms have started having wash basins. It is convenient and saves a lot of time. If managed properly…they can be very useful for the teacher.

Acharya Devo Bhava

The lobby of the Indus World School of Business in Greater Noida is interesting. Apart from the many different inspiring posters on the wall...one really touched me.

I saw a mounted picture of a gentleman with the title 'Acharya Devo Bhava'. On a closer look I read the name of the person... 'Professor Ishwar Dayal'. Hadnt heard of the name before.

Suddenly it dawned that this person must have been a beloved teacher of the management of the college to be given that kind of space in the lobby and honoured. Acharya Devo Bhava means Teacher is God.

Aesthetically done...the picture merged with words written that described the teacher... catalyst, writer learner ...

Interesting to see such a thing. Rarely do you find teachers' acknowledged as publicly as this. This is not the first College to be set up...many others missed out in acknowledging people who mentored them at one time in school or college. Perhaps every school should put up the pictures of inspiring teachers of the school.

If not teachers then at least educationists like Maria Montessori. Every second school uses the suffix Montessori but i havent seen her picture in any of them...leave putting pictures of Piaget or Vygotsky.

Indus World School...interesting trend to start.

Prayer wheels as learning aid

This is something that I saw at the Step by Step School in Noida.

Tibetan prayer wheels being painted with letters of the alphabet and numbers. Looks nice and is a nice toy for children. Perhaps adding to their motor skills while enhancing cognition as well.