Anahita Aman is in her seventh year at the Aga Khan Academy in Hyderabad. Having started there in grade 5, she is now a grade 11 student in the Diploma Programme. She is wise beyond her years and yet has a youthfulness that is contagious. She is full of hopes and dreams and strives to get the most out of her days at the Academy so that she can ultimately give back to the community and society at large.

For Anahita, the strongest part of the Academy is its holistic approach to student development.  “They don’t just focus on the academics but also on sports, music and art – so in that way it’s a really holistic approach to learning, and it’s helped me develop into a multidimensional and multifaceted person,” Anahita says. This holistic approach means that she gets the freedom to explore her passions, and that excites her. She loves music – whether it be singing, playing the keyboard and tabla, or learning Indian dance. She is also a self-proclaimed feminist who is passionate about gender-based violence, gender equality and education for girls. She recently had the chance to fuse these two passions as part of a personal project requirement at school. She wrote, composed, and performed her own songs with powerful messages on these topics.

This year, Anahita made a shift to the residential programme and says that it has been a great learning experience – one that has forced her to come out of her shell. She has learned how to better manage herself and her time, and she has become more independent and more social. “I learned how to adapt to my surroundings, how to adjust with other people and to make things work.” But Anahita feels that she has grown in other ways also, and this stems again from the holistic approach of the Academies. 

“Service and action is mandatory as a part of the curriculum…they emphasise the need for community awareness, for concern about society, and they emphasise the need to give back and to make positive and effective contributions to society.” For the service and action component of the Academy’s programme, Anahita was part of fundraising teams that raised money for nearby government schools to install water filtration systems and purchase sports equipment, among other things. “We don’t look at it as an obligation or a compulsion but we do it out of passion, and the Academy gives us that passion, that feeling or need to give back to society,” Anahita says. She is proud of her service accomplishment along with many others that the Academy has also helped her to achieve. 

She is a member of the journalism club and has made great strides in her writing skills, including how to better articulate her thoughts. She has taken part in a national sports tournament where she represented her school in football and track and field, having won a silver in high jump. And she has been part of the Model United Nations where she not only got a real sense of how the world works, including how people live and what the prevalent issues are, but also developed skills in public speaking, problem solving and knowledge application. Anahita says, “The Academy helps us apply this knowledge to real-life situations.”

The holistic approach to learning and development that the Academy takes is something that Anahita believes makes it unique. But there are other things too. For one, there is no spoon-feeding. Instead, you’re taught how to learn and how to learn on your own – the approach is not one of rote learning but rather application of real-life situations. She’s also really happy that the Academy creates a safe space. “We have that sense of comfort that there’s no pressure of performing and we have the space to experiment with things. We don’t feel pressure at any point, we don’t feel stressed, and we don’t look at exams as huge challenges but as small barriers that we can overcome.” 

Anahita also believes that the Academy’s mission and vision are both important and inspiring. In fact, it was the mission that attracted her parents to send her there. “It teaches us to be culturally rooted and diverse. It teaches us how to accept our differences and so we have this feeling of community,” says Anahita. The Academy also aligns within the framework of the International Baccalaureate (IB) programmes. As such, the attributes of its learner profile are very powerful in instilling life values. All of this is what she believes make it distinct from many other schools.

Anahita credits the Academy for helping her become less shy and less self-conscious. She says, “I feel like I have the comfort to be who I am and to express myself freely. I feel acknowledged and I feel I’m being appreciated for who I am.” When asked if there was any particular person at the Academy that played a big part in this, or whether there was someone she really looks up to, she says that she doesn’t account only one person as a role model but instead looks to the many amazing people she has met along the way for their different but equally important attributes. “I may like someone’s enthusiasm, someone’s hard work and dedication, the way they work with people, the way they bring people together,” Anahita says. “I like to get inspired by these characteristics, by these attributes from different people and imbibe them into myself to be the best person I can be.”

Anahita’s future looks bright. While she is still unsure of what exactly she wants to do, she has learned how to articulate her passion, and that in itself has given her a sense of determination. She hopes to be able to combine her interests in music and literature with humanities and gender studies. She imagines perhaps becoming a poet or musician and incorporating important messages into her work. “I think the Academy is giving me the space and the platform to explore what I’m actually interested in,” Anahita says, “and I think that will lead me to my ultimate ambition.”

By Ceisin Popat

“Being part of an open-minded community that encouraged challenging what we were taught, the willingness to accept one another and inspire each other to grow constantly, was very refreshing. I credit these experiences for much of whom I am today.”
– Dania Quadri, Class of 2014

Dania Quadri currently studies biomedical science at St George’s, University of London, United Kingdom. During her summer vacation in Hyderabad, she decided to put her time to good use through a short internship at the Aga Khan Academy Hyderabad. She was involved in teaching science and leadership to Grade 7 students and assisted with Diploma Programme-level history, biology and theory of knowledge classes.

She was also instrumental in helping to organise the Mental Health Awareness Week (MHAW) in September 2016.

“As I aspire to be a doctor, I feel that it is necessary to acquire experience in a role that demands care, patience and a great deal of understanding,” she explains. “I knew teaching and organising the MHAW would contribute to my personal growth and career aspirations but it would also allow me to give back to my school – something very important to me.”

Through MHAW, Dania was able to contribute to reducing the stigma associated with mental illness within the Academy community.

“As a student myself, I know how hard it is for students who are mentally unwell to cope with studies and social life at school," she said. "I wanted to spread awareness about it being perfectly normal to feel mentally unwell, to know the difference between clinical illness and just a rough emotional phase, and to encourage students to seek help and advice if they are feeling low.”

Her internship made her realise she was more passionate about education than she thought. She particularly enjoyed the responsibility an educator has in developing a student’s personality and knowledge.

“As a teacher, it was interesting to observe school from the other side," she said. "Spending time with all the teachers made me realise how much they actually care for their students. The support is incredible at the Academy and different learning abilities are not only understood but truly valued.”

My four-year journey at the Aga Khan Academy Mombasa came to a close at a much faster pace than I am comfortable with. With graduation having recently taken place, I can’t help but look back at the immense growth I have undergone personally, socially and intellectually during my time here.

The prospect of joining the Academy had always sat passively on the horizon – I had cousins pass through the Diploma Programme here long before me, and a sister who soon planned to make the shift. So, at the age of 14, it didn’t come as much of a surprise when my parents suggested I move with her.

Leaving the comfort of my home and the company of friends with whom I had spent my entire academic career proved a lot harder than I anticipated. Coming from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, I faced less of a culture shock than many incoming students I would interact with over the years, but this didn’t soften the blow of finding myself in the middle of an entirely new education system. Here I was, an anxious teenager who had long since associated learning with the contents of a textbook, now being introduced to criteria, conceptual understanding and inquiry-based learning, all of which seemed like another language to me. Like most who have been in my position, I felt alarmingly overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of responsibility I had to take, both for my learning as an MYP (Middle Years Programme) student, and my well-being as a residential student.

I was lucky enough to have a dorm parent that year who was very perceptive to these challenges, and through her support, and that of several of my class teachers, I was able to integrate relatively seamlessly into life at the Academy. I was particularly struck by the attitude towards learning harboured by my peers, many of whom viewed it as a communal effort and helped me adjust to the new system. This culture of intellectual humility is something that I am honoured to have been able to contribute to over the last 18 months, by tutoring MYP students in subjects I found particularly challenging in the programme.

True to the school’s mandate to develop holistic individuals, I was encouraged to join several extracurricular activities, which empowered me to pursue my passion for learning and service. One of these was a community and service group called Learn and Earn, which operated under the residential programme’s weekend activities. As the coordinator for logistics and communication, I helped organise weekly sessions with students from a nearby school where we carried out activities to promote life skills, as well as sell food items that we had cooked together to raise funds for the renovation of their school’s kitchen. This was my first experience with planning and executing a project of such a scale, and it increased my interactions with members of both the school and the surrounding communities. That same year, I was encouraged by my biology teacher to participate in the 2015 Golden Climate Olympiad where my project on cost-effective biogas digesters earned a silver award.

Two years later, I drew on my experiences as a younger, and newer, student at the Academy to fulfil my role as a Dorm Captain. I have viewed this opportunity as one of my greatest ways of giving back to the community I have grown so much in. In addition to organising orientation activities and events for the residential community, my role has required me to serve as a bridge between the students and the teachers. In considering the perspectives of both parties when discussing administrative issues, I have developed a deeper understanding of the importance of good communication and empathy. By playing a coordinative role, I have been able to engage directly with the sheer diversity of the school community. Interacting with individuals of various backgrounds and opinions has taught me the importance of engaging in open-minded and meaningful dialogue, which has enabled me to broaden my horizons. As a student leader, I have come to appreciate the importance of respect for individuals not because of the authority they hold, but simply because of the fact that they are people, a value that resonates strongly with the Academy’s vision.

Learning to balance these responsibilities and my commitments to other extracurricular programs with the demands of the rigorous International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme has stretched my abilities to manage and organise my time. Most of my courses have involved an extensive amount of critical thinking and have taught me not to look at academic subjects as separate entities. This has in part been catalysed by my Extended Essay on the economic implications of stroke, which focused on biology and economics. As a result, I have been able to make more meaningful conclusions from my learning, and to question things better. I am particularly grateful to my English teacher, whose classes stimulated thoughtful discussions about our world and why things are the way they are. Such platforms have been abundant in my time at the Academy, giving me the opportunity to voice my opinions, take on issues that I am passionate about and to develop a strong social conscience that has helped shape my identity.

As I consider what life will be like after graduation, I find myself saddened by the fact that I will soon be in a new environment without the strong network of support from teachers and students I have built here at the Academy. To these people, and my family of course, I owe not only my intellectual growth but also the strong sense of self I have developed. These are things that I hope to carry with me as I move on to pursue a degree in Global Affairs at Yale University, now with a larger family, concentrated in a region of the world I look very forward to coming back to work in.

By Kamila Janmohamed