As part of the Outreach programme of The Chennai education centre PULSC

(Pathashaala universal learning support centre) was inaugurated this year by

IIT and DST. The vision of PULSC has been to support the education of the
neighbouring rural schools while providing them a safe place to learn and
making academics fun and pragmatic. It is also involved in propagating organic
farming to the farmers of the neighbouring villages( it has conducted a
workshop for farmers along with pasumai vikatan) and empowering rural
women.
PULSC started as a pilot project with two of the Pathashaala staff thinking and
documenting ideas of how the outdoor science park on the Pathashaala
campus can be used to supplement the physics syllabus of the middle school
samacheer text. The outdoor science park has life size models of experiments
which explain and demonstrate physics concepts. It was funded by DST.
Based on the study and documenting done by Care earth foundation of the
flora in the campus and my observation and study of the fauna found on
campus ( mainly the birds , butterflies and snakes) we started thinking of how
we can use campus walks to supplement the biology syllabus of the samacheer
text covering topics like classification, animal and plant adaptation, food chains
and food webs , biomes, etc. Later we also made many posters of the various
organisms found on the campus and are using them in our workshops with the
neighbouring schools. We also created a touch and smell garden which has
many medicinal herbs and plants of practical use. We envisage to use it to
revive traditional rural medicine and educate people about the usefulness of
plants we meet in our daily life.
In the months to come PULSC had its own staff and we started building
material and making workshops to support and supplement the education of
children from the schools of nearby villages. In this light PULSC has been
steadily blooming and working towards its vision.
Currently we are visited by three schools from the villages of Aanoor ,
Vallipuram and PV Kalathur. We have conducted so far about nine workshops
for classes 5 and 8. We mainly focused on science. We have included the
science park, campus walks, presentations, art activities, quizzes and hands on
experiments in our workshops. We have found that our workshops are fruitful

not just when they cover content but when they have an element of evocation,
a AHA! moment or a moment wonder. The vortex experiment , building a
simple circuit using LEDs, naming and recognising butterflies are some
components of our workshops which have never failed to create these
moments.
We mainly intend to nurture in the student wonder, making connections,
applying and persisting with ones own passions and interest. In all of our
introductory sessions before the workshop our co-ordinator Sumitra akka
emphasizes the significance of questioning and persisting with ones enquiries.
She also gravely cautions peer mocking and put down to create the right kind
of atmosphere for the workshops.
The children come to quite often with many questions which may strike them
during the time they spend here ( they are encouraged to do so) some of them
which we attempt to answer . We note down all of their questions so that at
some point of time we address them. We also incorporate their previous
questions while planning our workshops. Some of the questions as PULSC staff
we contemplate on before every session is what evokes and empowers the
child so that s/he becomes responsible for his/her learning, how do we use our
resources and what makes the student actively engage.