Arpana Bohra

Artist, Change agent, Educator/Teacher, Idea generator, World traveler

Head of Innovation and Special Initiatives at Jain International Residential School, a fully residential school near Bengaluru. I teach IB English Language and Literature, and I design and run the school's co-curricular programme — including an inter-school Model United Nations that brings 300 delegates onto our campus for three days. Twenty years of teaching, eight of them here.

I want students to enjoy learning enough to look forward to it — not as a reward at the end of the work, but because the work itself is interesting. A temple studied through five subjects. A product they researched, costed, made and sold. An exhibition instead of a worksheet. If school is interesting while they are in it, they keep learning after they leave it.

Subjects are an administrative convenience. The world does not arrive divided into them.

and residential school education., co-curricular and experiential programme design, English language and literature under the IB and Cambridge curricula, interdisciplinary curriculum design, Model United Nations

I have been to four TEDx events as a guest — three at Jain University and one at a school in Bengaluru. Not one talk was wasted. Eight speakers from unrelated fields, one after another, each with an idea I had never met before. I knew nothing about most of their subjects and left with an opinion about every one. That is what I want for our students: a day where every talk is worth its ten minutes.

Drawing mandalas. Mathematics and patience in the same object, made one circle at a time. Almost nobody at school knows I do it. I also cycle, which nobody would guess either.