The Barefoot Rise Fellowship offers motivated individuals the opportunity to develop and expand in many areas. The fellowship is a minimum one-year commitment, with options to extend for a second year. During the first-year fellows work as teachers at our experimental primary school, Shikshaniketan.
About the Barefoot Rise Fellowship
Prior to the start of the school year fellows go through an extensive month-long orientation, where they are introduced to effective teaching practices in an innovative and hands-on manner.
Throughout the school year fellows are supported by mentors through regular classroom observation, feedback sessions and group meetings. Through teaching fellows are given a chance to develop their skills and gain authentic teaching experience. If they are selected to stay on for a second year, they likely would shift to more of a support person, working to collaborate with local teachers to innovate and use new techniques.
In addition to developing as teachers the fellowship provides multiple exposure opportunities, which are meant to help broaden their philosophical understanding of education, teaching and learning along with helping to develop their leadership skills. This includes at least two trips to alternative educational institutions and/or seminars outside of Rajasthan.
Being immersed in rural Rajasthani culture, fellows are given an opportunity to learn about new things. Similarly, living and working in Barefoot College presents fellows with many opportunities to meet free-thinking and innovative people that are focused on tackling the world’s biggest social problems.
Barefoot Rise Fellowship Mission
While working as classroom teachers our intention is to create a safe learning-space for students, which enables them to share and explore their thoughts and ideas, with emphasis on developing the required knowledge, skills and values for them to be successful in their given communities. All the while, we hope to keep focus on the sustainability of our work through documenting lesson plans and activities and creating an archive of durable teaching materials. In addition, we intend to activate cross-learning platforms with local teachers, community and staff by exchanging skills and experiences that are relevant to classroom and local culture.
Below is a list of values we honour in the Rise Fellowship. For a detailed breakdown click here.
- Empathetic Engagement
- Collaborative Creation
- Locally Global Mindset
- Reasoned Approach
- Sustainable Action
- Constant Curiosity
