Many colleges in the United States require their applicants to have completed at least two years of a foreign language. While high schoolers may be limited in what their school offers – there is a growing audience among the youth for Samskritam. Few are aware that it can now be efficiently taken online from Samskrita Bharati. Regardless of your mother tongue, if you are worried about strengthening the ties of your children to your cultural history, understanding the grammar of one of the most studied languages in the world, and learning the efficiency of that which has shaped the intellectual history of much of South Asian history, this blog is for you.
In this chat with Geetha Santhanam and Giri Bharathan, the national coordinators for Samskritam As a Foreign Language (SAFL) program for high schoolers – we learn that SAFL was designed to provide a rigorous and enriching curriculum to train our youth to not just speak the language efficiently but exit with a tangible certificate that is recognizable in many universities in the United States.
How was this curriculum devised – was this an offshoot of any course from Bharatham?
Giri: SAFL is designed entirely to meet the needs of students in the United States and Canada. For a 3 year curriculum, we examined the Pravesha, Parichaya and Shiksha textbooks as a basis to fulfill our vision to support high schoolers learning Samskritam. However, we soon realized it’s not conducive as they are designed for success in a written examination. They do not align with how we teach Samskritam through Sambhashana Shibiram for adults where we strongly emphasise conversational fluency from the very beginning. From our first level, simple vocabulary, sentence structure and sounds are introduced along with Devanagiri. Our dual semester system during the school year is interspersed with our summer accelerated programs to reinforce the learning.
Geetha: As an example, Samskrita vibhaktis are not introduced directly as a grammatical construct but naturally derived and understood from the question-answer format in sambhashanam or daily conversations. This way the students are not intimidated by rote learning.
In your opinion, what are the hidden benefits of signing up for SAFL?
Giri: Learning Samskritam also re-emphasizes their cultural heritage. In addition, it is not uncommon for our students to be exposed to some Indian art form either by attending Bala Vihar, or learning classical music and dance. By attending SAFL in parallel, they begin to not just understand the lyrics better, their pronunciation improves as they pay closer attention to songs or shlokas they recite.
Geetha: At the very beginning, the focus is on simplicity, however by the time they reach the advanced levels, they are able to break down shlokas or verses from the Bhagavad Gita. They are able to listen to simple shlokas such as “Saraswati Namasthubyam ..” and articulate it in prose with Anvayakarma. The transition and development is consistent.
Giri: Even for those who don’t pursue SAFL for their primary foreign language requirement goal, it can be included as a strong activity in their common app. Many universities recognize Samskrita Bharati, and honor the certification. As an instance from our first batch of SAFL in 2013, we had a student who got admitted to Harvard. His admission letter explicitly invited the student to join and continue their Samskritam studies in Harvard in their classics department. An admitted student at Northwestern, called out in his application essay how his Samskritam experience would bring diversity to the campus. Once he was admitted, he asked for his foreign language credits to be waived. Northwestern University reached out to a professor from University of Chicago to test his proficiency. The professor not just attested to his spoken skills but also recognized Samskrita Bharati as a credible source!
What aspects do you think the students enjoy and what ones they find difficult?
Geetha: I have heard from other teachers that the systematic method of learning grammar is one aspect students enjoy. Ordinary and simple communication makes the language feel more modern to them. Several find Anvayakarma of verses interesting, i.e. doing the pada-vibhaga and communicating the gist in prose form useful.
Giri: We have developed games to reinforce their learning in homework and instruction and that is an attention grabber. Our Moodle based learning platform has assignments, quizzes, flash cards, and other resources that have been gamified. This adaptive bite-size format makes learning interesting. Since the students are in class for one hour and 45 minutes once every week, daily pop quizzes in our RAPL (Rapid Learning) platform ensures they don’t lose touch with that week’s learning. All these exercises count towards the grade.
How are students involved beyond the course in the organization?
Giri: Normally students get busy once they graduate from SAFL with other priorities towards high school graduation and joining colleges. However some do come back to contribute to the organization. For example, out of the 45 SAFL teachers this year, about 15 of them are senior SAFL graduates who are either in college or working. Others volunteer in the local kendram in teaching children or adults. As part of Yuva Gana, we hope to engage more of them after graduation. There is no language based research within SAFL, however there are opportunities to create more teaching materials, doing research and creating reports for our recertification process or serving as teaching assistants or upa-shikshakaah. Outside of SAFL, there are always opportunities like Bala Shikshanam or shibirams in their local kendrams. Even when the Presidents Volunteering Service Award has been temporarily suspended, we track the hours of our students internally.
Geetha: We provide training where our experienced teachers conduct workshops and webinars and provide shadowing opportunities.
Giri: After SAFL, we encourage them to write the Pravesha pariksha. For those who have successfully advanced through all the three course levels of SAFL and contributed service hours towards Samskrita Bharati activities, they can qualify for merit-based awards. At the first level, there is a cash prize of $250, at the second level they can complete the Parichaya exam and complete 30 hours of volunteering and qualify for $500. Completing the Shiksha exam along with 40-hours of volunteering qualifies for $750 and finally by writing the Kovida and completing 50-hours of volunteering, they get $1000. In effect, they can get back 3 years of tuition at the end of it.
What are the average class sizes?
Giri: Our classes average around 15 students, going lower is harder without the availability of trained staff to support it.
Geetha: Even during classes, teachers take turns and create more focussed breakout rooms as needed to support the learning.
Tell me about your summer camps? What value do they add beyond the regular school year?
Giri: We prefer referring to them as summer accelerated programs as the term camps can be misleading with different interpretations. Before Covid, we had in person residential camps. Since our course is primarily online, we introduced a week-long residential youth camp to increase direct interaction with teachers and peers. Usually they review what they learnt the previous year and get a preview of what’s upcoming. Since there are three levels of students, the senior ones also had an opportunity to take up leadership roles and conduct some part of the program. We earlier had one camp each on the east and west coast of the United States. Since Covid, we have moved our summer programs fully online. Students used to love our summer camps as for many of them, this was their first time away from home and helped them create stronger bonds with their peers. However, with increasing air fares, logistics planning and availability of staff, we have not been able to host in person camps.
The only one we continue is our immersive Medha camp, offered to SAFL graduates at Bengaluru’s Aksharam campus. Much like students learning Spanish who spend a week in Guatemala or Spain, here for close to 10 days, they speak and listen to Samskritam all day.
How does Accreditation work? Do school campuses acknowledge Samskrita Bharati’s certification for credits?
Giri: Accreditation is a continuous process where a program’s authenticity and validity is evaluated and certified to make it more recognizable. This basically includes all aspects including the curriculum and teaching protocols. We are accredited as a supplementary accreditation program as we do not grant a high school diploma. We pursued it with Western Association for Schools and Colleges (WASC), one of the five major agencies for this purpose. Technically you don’t have to go to every agency, as if a student moved from a school district in San Francisco, to New York, NY will honor their prior certifications. In spite of that we have a sign off from another agency, NCAA to help athletics focused students to also avail of this. However, we see that every school and school district have their own rules which make the actual execution inconsistent. Usually private and charter schools are more receptive. In Massachusetts, my children’s school agreed immediately and waived their foreign language requirement.
Geetha: WASC accreditation provides the basic eligibility for high school credits, though many districts in California require additional steps like Principal Validation to finalize the credits. Because all our courses have undergone a rigorous Quality Matters certification process, SAFL is officially UC-approved and listed in the UC Online Publishers Directory. This ensures our courses meet the (LOTE/A-G) college-prep standards, meaning UCs may honor the credit even in cases where an individual high school chooses not to grant local graduation credit.
To help students get their grades onto official transcripts, we provide all the necessary documentation required by the school districts all across the US. School responses vary: some grant approval immediately, while others may treat the course as an elective or require placement exams, such as those for the State Seal of Biliteracy. The credit value also depends on the region; for example, one year of SAFL can equate to two years of credit in Texas. Typically, parents initiate the conversation with their school and then put the administration in touch with us to coordinate the details.
