THE TEAM

 

 

Priti Mishra Issar is Executive Director of Dihika:Living Wisdom School . Her early schooling was in the UK and she has traveled and lived all over the world. She holds a Master's degree in English Literature as well as a Bachelor's in Education. In search of a system that taught children how to live healthful, harmonious, balanced lives, how to be successful human beings, how to effectively combine the spiritual wisdom of India with the material efficiency of the West, she found in J Donald Walter's Education for Life that which she'd been looking for…and a whole lot more.

  

       Leena Aparajit, our Consultant for setting up the school framework was Founding Head of the Shri Ram School. She moved on to serve as Director of Education with Scholars International Group in Dubai, where she set up the Scholars International Academy, accredited with The Cambridge International Primary Years Programme. After spending two years as Consultant to The Scindia School, Gwalior, Leena is presently Head of Education of the prestigious Aga Khan Foundation in India.

  

‘Priya’ Sandy McDivitt, our Founder Principal, holds a BA [Humanities], BS [Education] & MA [Multicultural Education], and figures in Nevada County’s ‘Who's Who’ for Outstanding Performance as School Administrator. At age 23, she was designated ‘Master Teacher’ & given the Outstanding Teacher of America award ....and this year, she received the Pioneer Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Association of Personalised Learning.

Deeply steeped in EFL philosophy, a great motivator who believes in dynamic partnership between parents, pupils and educators, Priya has been Co-Founder & Executive Director of the certified & accredited Forest Charter School in Nevada City. An avid skier, golfer and outdoor person, Priya has traveled extensively and has visited India many times.

  

‘Santoshi’ Nancy Kendall is the EFL Program Coordinator. Starting out as an elementary school Teacher, Santoshi became a notably successful Realtor, a Raja Yoga Teacher, helped set up the LW School in Palo Alto and is presently CFO of LW School in Nevada City, California. A compelling speaker, Santoshi has taught throughout the United States as well as in India and Australia. She has made 14 trips to India between 1988 and 2008.

                                        

'Narani' Toby Moorhouse was a public school teacher before she began teaching at the fledgling Living Wisdom School in Ananda Village over 30 years ago, Narani created and now directs the preschool in Ananda Village. She teaches kindergarten and first grade and is a master trainer in the EFL teacher training program.

Narani speaks frankly about the beginnings of our Living Wisdom system:  “In those early days, we teachers felt great personal spiritual inspiration and longed to share it with the children. We experimented with countless approaches and had a mixture of successes and failures. Through that process, certain approaches began to stand out as universally successful, and we learned what types of classes, experiences, and training were consistently effective at reaching children".

Narani is a wife and mother with a son in the Ananda Living Wisdom High School.

   

                                           

Anita Bali , Head of School, is an alumnus of Sophia School with B.Sc & B.Ed degrees and over 20 years experience in teaching and school administration.

A warm, people’s person, Anita is a problem solver and innovator with strong interpersonal skills. Trained in EFL, she believes that education is about joy for learning and that self-discovery is far more relevant than being ‘taught’.
She loves reading, music, playing the piano and extensive traveling.

 

Simran Issar graduated with the first batch from The Shri Ram School, Gurgaon, and went on to a degree in Journalism Honours from Lady Shri Ram College. She co directed a documentary film and worked in TV Production, but it was while volunteering at a village school for the underprivileged that she felt she’d found her métier. After completing EFL Training at the Ananda Institute in California and interning at the Living Wisdom Schools in the United States, Simran joined Dihika:LWS in July 2009.

 

                                                                       

Ameeta Kapoor, graduated in Science and Law from Mumbai University, took a diploma in Journalism as well as in French and worked for 20 years with a leading financial institution. Discovering that teaching little children was her true calling, she resigned her corporate job, underwent the Teacher Training Course at the Steiner Waldorf School, Mumbai, as well as Nursery Teacher's Training here in Gurgaon, and has worked for 3 years as an Early Years' teacher. EFL resonates deeply with her natural leaning towards alternative education, and she shall handle our Kindergarten Section.