It is aptly said that students learn more effectively when they are engaged in meaningful and varied learning experiences. To facilitate new learning and to make it interesting, it becomes indispensably important to go beyond the text books either by engaging the students in a variety of tasks or by actually putting them into different contexts for learning. As our Principal, Ms. Preeta Pillai is very avid and quite particular about customizing the instructional practices to suit the age and need of the heterogeneous learners, such Educational visits become a frequent and invariable aspect of the annual academic planning at Podar World School, Sherkhi.
Students of classes 9 to 11 were taken to the Baroda Dairy along with their respective class teachers and the P.E.Instructor, Mr Ashish Jha. As they reached 20 minutes earlier than the time allotted to visit the dairy, they learners got some time to enjoy on the clean and well maintained lush green lawns of the dairy, sitting in circles and groups, some even lying on the green bed till they were allowed to enter the building. Sharp at 9.30 am one of the officials of the Quality Control department took the students into the building. The students moved in a single line holding a note pad and a pen each to jot down what all they happened to see and hear, with their teachers accompanying them and continuously instructing to be disciplined. The official, of Q.C dept, foremost talked to them about the year of establishment of the factory and showed a few black and white photographs of the factory in those days. Then he pointed to a showcase that displayed all the items (milk products) that are available in almost all provision stores and Amul stores of India. The students were quite tempted to see the things and even started pointing out and saying to their teacher and their class mates about the items of their choice and they were capable of gorging in huge quantities. Then they were taken to an open area with fencing all around. As the learners were led to the fenced area through a narrow strip of walking area where on both sides there were huge steel containers with water kept boiling all the time to be used in sterilizing all small containers and milk packets where in milk and other products are stored. The learners were shown the Centrifugation machine in which butter is prepared and the machine that prepared the butter milk. As they moved to the railing and looked down into the vast open area they could see 7 to 8 opened wardrobe like machines with long hollow steel tubes fixed to the top of the machines carrying milk and filling it into the 500 ml milk pouches that reach the homes every morning. The filled bags were then collected by lots of workers attired in navy blue uniform from top to bottom including a cap standing close to the machines to quickly pick the pouches from the container to be arranged into plastic open troughs which are also washed with hot water before the workers place the milk pouches in an orderly manner. The workers were very quick in collecting the bags which got filled, sealed and fell into the container kept below it at every one or two seconds. The students and the teachers stood spell bound for quite some time without saying anything watching the process of filling, packaging, sealing and arranging carried out in quick succession. Meanwhile the official informed that milk reaches from Co-operatives around 2 am in the wee hours of morning which is then tested to see the varied concentrations or thickness so that the whole amount could be separated based on their concentration level, then pasteurized and finally filled in pouches. The learners were moved to learn that the dairy employees have to work in shifts as the dairy works 24x7, throughout the year supplying milk to all. There are 1500 employees in the Baroda Dairy supplying 15,000 pouches of milk through different agents to the residents of Vadodara. Within a span of 15 to 20 minutes the visit got over as in the other areas work was in full swing and they did not want to take any risk with the children. Though the learners were a little disappointed, they were all praise for the skillful workers who worked so quickly and with such agility throughout the process.
The knowledge system is fragmented at the school level with separate subjects taught separately. For instance Physics and Biology are taught as though they have no relation to each other. An Inter-disciplinary approach to teaching science becomes the cutting edge of integrating difficult disciplines. As our learners had learned about the concept of ‘Division of Labour’ in Economics and about ‘Pasteurization’ in Biology, a visit to the dairy enabled them to get a practical knowledge of what they learned in two different disciplines merged or integrated with such fineness at the Baroda Dairy. Besides the feeling for their fellowmen who work round the clock to ensure that each child gets their cup of morning milk (complete food) invariably seemed to be the best part of this trip.
