Teach at Kadam

This is demanding, and it is not a job in the usual sense. Read the whole page before you write to us.

The team cooking together under a shade outdoors, pots on the stove, one person stirring. — The team, cooking.

A facilitator sitting on the classroom mat with parents and children around her, at a meeting of the Red group. — A parents' meeting, Red group.

What the work is

Thirty children have three adults with them all day. What those adults notice is written down, and the next week is planned around it after the children have gone home.

There is no textbook to hide behind. A skill is worked through a project, and the project is built from what the children in the room need, which changes. Big and small is learned by going out for leaves. The day has a shape you can read. The plans are yours to make, after hours, from what you saw.

The Director, the Vice-Principal and the Coordinator live on the campus.

What we ask

Before we say what is provided, this is what we ask, because it is the part that decides whether Kadam is for you.

We ask for a minimum of two years.

We are a team of passionate individuals, working for purpose and meaning.

We teach by embodying. We would rather inspire than instruct, and we would rather learn alongside the children than teach at them.

The curriculum is alive, so the adults have to be.

We do inner work together, as a community, without a formula.

Parents are brought in as fellow educators and, in a sense, fellow students.

Through stories, films and other mediums, at the right age, we open the topics young people need in order to live well.

The children here are meant to become creators, entrepreneurs and activists, and the adults are asked to be the same.

And leadership runs on honest self-inquiry, starting with the people who run the school.

Children eating together on mats spread on the grass outdoors. — Lunch on the grass.

What is provided

Residence. Food. Natural, farm-based living with a purpose-driven team.

You would live on the campus, as five of us do now, and eat from the farm next door. The photograph at the top of this page is the team cooking; that is what living here looks like.

Who you would work with

Six people, named, three of whom live here. And three Elders we go to when we are not sure.

If you are new to teaching

BKPJM, the Society that runs Kadam, also runs Teachership, a two-year residential B.Ed. fellowship for women, twenty in each cohort. Kadam is its practice school. If you want to enter teaching rather than move within it, that is the route.

Open now

Architect-in-Residence, Kadam Experiential School. Live on campus and carry the design of the new school through Phase 1, to the end of December 2028, as the school's own person alongside the architects. A contract with the BKPJM Society, residence and food provided, with the option of moving into a teaching role afterwards.

What we read together

Sri Aurobindo and The Mother on education. Gijubhai Badheka and Parker Palmer, who are why the parents' circle exists. Robert Kegan, Frederic Laloux and Ashok Malhotra on how adults develop, which is the other half of the work. Longer pieces on each are coming to Notes from school.

How to apply

Write to hr@bkpjm.org.

Before a CV, we would like a page from you: who you are, and why two years here.