Thoughts from the Principal

By Pintso Lauenstein Denjongpa

Everything begins with a story. The story of Taktse is the story of a vanished kingdom, the story of a colonized Himalayas, the story of the rapid transformation from feudalism to democracy, and the story of a group of Sikkimese who realized that they were starving for education, the kind that would empower instead of humiliate, inspire instead of defeat. Click here for the story of Taktse

After raising funds both locally and abroad, the school opened in 2006 with 17 students. It is located on a hilltop donated by the son of the last King of Sikkim, in view of the local protecting deity Mt. Kanchendzonga. We now have 138 students ranging from nursery to 9th grade, from Sikkim and Bhutan, 43 of whom live with us on campus (the youngest are 5-year-old twin girls).
Our mission is to cultivate these students into ethical and capable citizens who have the skills to balance the global realities they see in the media with their rich cultural inheritance. And it is equally as important to cultivate our teachers; they have never seen or experienced the kind of education where there is no fear of corporal punishment, where relationships are based on respect and reason, and where the love of reading is the foundation for a life of achievement, reflection and compassion.

Our faculty comes primarily from nearby Darjeeling, Kalimpong and Sikkim itself. Having received a traditional/colonial education themselves, these teachers face the daily challenge of implementing systems which are completely foreign to them and have no precedent here. The traditional model of the autocratic teacher, pacing the classroom with stick in hand, does not exist at Taktse. Instead, teachers encourage open discussion, questioning and reflection, and refrain from corporal punishment.

Some of our students come from educated families, and some not. However, these families share a desire for a better education for their children, avoiding the lecture and rote memorization-based education, with 40 to 50 students in a classroom, that is common in the region. Currently eight of our students receive scholarships. We would like to increase the proportion of scholarship students to one-third of the student body.

We expect our students and teachers to push the limits of their capabilities. As an institution, we are constantly trying new ideas, implementing new methods, and trying to improve the education we provide. We are currently implementing the Fountas & Pinnell method of guided reading, literacy blocks and classroom management with great success.

We have benefited from a steady stream of visiting resource people. They have aided us with our professional development workshops, ranging from the Great Books Method, to the Bank Street model of Social Studies, to the idea of “portfolios.” We have been steadily building our library with book donations from abroad, and have recently instituted a reading-tutor program for our struggling students with help from Chris Ansin who visited us for a month.

Our over-arching vision is to uplift the quality of life in the region. We have sponsored Family Writing Nights, Parent Reading Workshops, and ICT and Orchid Workshops for other local private and public schools. We have found that students, teachers and parents who participate in these gatherings are amazed to find themselves stimulated, excited and eager for more.

Our students are already making this mission a reality. Tshering Wangyal, a third-grade scholarship student whose right arm is oddly bent from a break when he was a baby, comes from a remote village called Yuksom. His parents are uneducated. We recently found out that he is known as “hero” at home. He reads books out loud to the other children in his village, shows them how to play the educational games we play at Taktse, and tells them stories.

Taktse is a work in progress. We need a high school for our ninth graders and better accommodations for our teachers. We are grateful for past support and hopeful that friends in Sikkim and around the world will continue to help us.