panaji while the rabindranathtagorefounded open university shantiniketan in west bengal has earned global recognition for its unorthodox curriculum and teaching methods like openair classrooms under trees goas very own shantiniketan located in the cool climes of the assagao valley is only known to a handful but its a success story worth being told and once other school children learn about its unorthodox methods like correction of exam answer papers by the students themselves its model may even be attractive to others basically its about bringing childhood to the children whove never had one says mathew kurien a christian pastor and founder trustee of the 25yearold el shaddai charitable trust which started the unconventional school 12 years ago like other schools they also have classes from nursery lower kindergarten upperkindergarten to class x with the metric exams held through the national institute of open schooling the unusual aspect is that the school has developed its own curriculum with the accelerated christian education system developed in the us as the starting point from there on they have incorporated elements from various european educational systems through foreign volunteers as also conventional teaching methods the shanti niketan curriculum was mostly put into shape by julia mathews wife who visited some schools in the us and europe to study their curriculums with 240 students most of them from the lower strata of society and 12 classrooms an auditorium and a library mathew says many of the students have gone on to become mbas and successful professionals all over the world unlike conventional schools where children have to compulsorily study all subjects at shanti niketan theyre free to choose the subjects they want to learn while normal schools have two terms they have three terms we have children coming from different age groups some are eight some ten so we cant send them to a normal school so what we do is we do a personal assessment of every child we are not agebased we are abilitybased on the basis of his ability we decide which class the child should go to kurien says explaining their system more than teaching them lessons it is about building a personality about more rationalizing reasoning the schools slogan is learning to think through life its about working hard to make them think independently he saysdevelop their emotional intelligencesurabhi kamat nestled in the little village of carmona about 10km from margao is a beautiful portuguese house that welcomes you to saxtti kids a preprimary school the brainchild of savia viegas a writer and painter this peculiar school is based in a modified backyard with creative classrooms minikitchen toy library sandpit slides and other essentials of a kindergarten the design of the school celebrates bright colors and a homely environment that imbibes creative methods to help a child understand and grow easily a painted wall displaying the five elements of nature teachers that dont stick to the typical blackboard teaching a sitout at one end where the kids sing their happy