Pathshala Revisited

This time, as a teacher.

I’ll never forget my first pathshala class. I was in fifth grade, and my family had just moved to the Detroit suburbs. One Sunday, my dad (without really telling me where we were going) got me into the car and drove me to the Jain Society of Greater Detroit (JSGD). Before I knew what was happening, I had been given a blue bag with “Jai Jinendra” written on the side, a textbook, and a stamp card so I could earn something called Jain Bucks. Ten minutes later, he left, and I was sitting on the floor of a partitioned room in the JSGD basement with a bunch of other kids learning about the three jewels of Jainism.

Despite the abrupt start, I found myself excited to meet other Jain kids — I didn’t go to school with any. In fact, I didn’t really know any outside of my own family. I was also finally getting answers to questions I’d had for a long time. What does this prayer that I say every day mean? Why do we have these rituals? Why do we fast during Paryushan, and what even is Paryushan? Most fundamentally, what does it mean to be Jain? Before pathshala, I don’t think I had a coherent answer to that question. I would tell people that it was “sort of like Hinduism and Buddhism, but different.” My pathshala experience gave me the conceptual grounding and tools to start developing a perspective on the role Jainism plays in my life.

Since the pandemic restrictions brought in-person pathshala to a pause, I’ve been teaching on Zoom.

Five years later, we moved to North Carolina. There was no high school pathshala class, but I asked as soon as I had the opportunity: could I volunteer to help teach? I wanted to help create that space for reflection and learning for other young Jains. I am 28, and have now been teaching on and off for almost twelve years in three different sanghs — North Carolina, Austin, and Metro Detroit. I most often get paired with high school students — I think the hope is that they’ll connect with me in a way that they don’t always with older teachers. Regardless of who I’m teaching, however, there are some basic approaches that inform my teaching philosophy:

• Have a plan — and be willing to let the plan go. All of my classes start with a basic agenda and time estimates: the information we’re going to cover, any group activities we’re going to do along the way, a space for recap and reflection, and then homework. This helps students know what to expect and keeps me on track, too. That being said, if the conversation goes on a tangent because there is something in particular students want to talk more about, debate, or learn more about, I let it! At the end of the day, there is no syllabus we have to follow or curriculum we have to complete. What is most important to me is that we are talking about things they want to explore.
• Connect to the real world. My least favorite pathshala classes growing up were ones where we learned something without talking about why it mattered or what it meant for our day-to-day lives. So when I teach, I try to make some kind of connection to the real world. Right when the COVID-19 pandemic started, we had a class on the 4 auxiliary bhavanas: maitri (friendship), pramod (appreciation), karuna (compassion), and madhyastha (neutrality). We read an article on Italian citizens singing from their balconies, a tweet about thanking teachers, and an article about grief and having compassion for ourselves when our routines are disrupted, looking at ways these bhavanas could help us through the real crisis that we were all living in. If I talk about a Jain principle like tap (fasting), I make sure to give examples of ways that my students can put that into practice that make sense to them — fasting isn’t just about food, it can also be giving up Instagram for a day. My hope is that this opens their minds and allows them to think more critically about the place Jainism has in their everyday decisions.
• Let every voice be heard. My second least favorite pathshala classes growing up were when the teacher just talked to us the whole time. I always make sure to incorporate small group activities and discussions into class. This serves two purposes. First, it makes the lesson active; it requires the students to reflect or think critically or make connections. Second, it allows more people to speak — not everyone is going to raise their hand during a class, but if I say “turn to your neighbor and discuss this for one minute,” it creates a safer space for students who are shy to speak up. Sometimes they even end up volunteering to share with the class after they’ve had the opportunity to try it out in a smaller group. My goal is to make sure that everyone finds ways to engage with what we’re doing.

I like to use pinup.com as a tool for collaboration in class. Students can write their reflections, thoughts, and notes on sticky notes for everyone to see, the same way I would on a whiteboard during our in-person classes.

If you’re a young Jain looking for ways to give back to your local or home Jain community, I can’t recommend volunteering to teach pathshala highly enough. Even if you can’t go regularly, volunteer to guest teach a class on a particular topic that is of interest to you. If you’re nervous about the teaching itself, there are lots of resources out there (like YJA Pathshala or the Jainism 101 videos) to spark inspiration, and pathshala teachers across the nation are incredibly collaborative and willing to share lessons and materials. The experience of seeing and hearing from someone close in age to them will mean a lot to those students — and I expect you’ll learn something from them, too.

- Hetali Lodaya