A five-day professional development at Tergar Schools, Kathmandu
There is a belief at the heart of Tergar Schools that shapes everything — how lessons are designed, how teachers relate to students, how the school itself is structured. It is simple enough to say in two words: basic goodness. The natural capacity for awareness, love, compassion, wisdom, and joy that lives in every person, already present, not needing to be installed.
Every May, teachers gather for a week to look more closely at what that means in a classroom.
This May, twelve teachers — including four joining the school for the first time — came together for Tergar Schools’ annual professional development. Visiting teachers from the Bodhgaya campus joined as full participants throughout the week. The training was led by Executive Director Dr. Justin Kelley, alongside Principal Bikash Deshar, Learning Leader Karma Shenden, and the full Tergar Schools teaching team.
Five afternoons of study and reflection. Mornings reserved for classroom observations and one-on-one mentoring. And one question running quietly underneath all of it: what does it actually look like to teach from basic goodness?
Each afternoon followed the same arc: a short presentation, a contemplative exercise, and a practical application block where teachers worked on real lessons and real classroom situations. The structure mirrors the school’s own curriculum — View, Experience, Application — so the professional development was itself a demonstration of the method it was teaching.
On the first day, teachers drew a sun with five rays — one for each quality of basic goodness — and filled each ray with something specific and personal from their own teaching lives. Not “I am compassionate,” but the particular moment, the particular student, the particular choice. When the suns were shared, something became visible: every sun held the same five qualities, yet each looked entirely different.
Unity and uniqueness, made tangible in a circle of teachers.
As the week progressed, the work moved outward — from self-recognition to classroom design, from inner awareness to the language teachers offer their students.
Teachers brought real lessons they were actively teaching and revised them with the week’s learning in mind. They worked through challenging student situations together, exploring what it means to hold a student accountable while still holding them in their basic goodness. They practiced the sentence stems and reflective prompts that help students name what is happening inside them before it spills into behavior: Today I learned. One thing that surprised me was. I wonder.
Anula Shakya, the school’s science and health teacher, reflected:
“The mind naturally leans towards negativity, often strengthening negative thoughts more than positive ones. Therefore, we should focus on giving positive feedback and telling students what to do rather than what not to do. With sincere intention, experimentation, careful observation and self reflection, we can help develop students who are resilient, compassionate and capable of contributing positively to society.”
It is a precise description of what the week was asking of every teacher — and of what the school asks every day.
Each day, teachers wrote what they planned to try in their classrooms — a specific experiment, a single change — on an index card. By Friday, each teacher held a small stack of cards in their own handwriting: a record of the week’s learning. A specific experiment tried on Monday. A lesson revised on Tuesday. A commitment made on Wednesday. A sentence stem to bring to students on Thursday.
Small things. But taken together, a picture of what it looks like to teach from basic goodness — not as an idea, but as a daily practice.
“I was inspired by everyone’s engagement in learning,” reflected Lynn Vineyard, Academic Curriculum Volunteer. “The process of listening, contemplating and then applying what was learned in the classroom seemed very supportive for teachers. Teachers were quite courageous in trying new methods and in welcoming observation and feedback. Everyone’s motivation was focused on being of benefit to our students and to each other.”
The final afternoon was a celebration.
Before the closing circle began, teachers wrote one observation from the week — one thing that had surprised them — on a sticky note and placed it under one of five columns: Awareness, Love, Compassion, Wisdom, Joy. The wall filled slowly. When teachers read what their colleagues had written, they saw the same qualities they had named on their own suns at the start of the week, now reflected in each other’s classrooms and students.
The closing prompt was: One wish for this group.
Teacher professional development at Tergar Schools is not primarily about technique. It is about recognition — helping teachers see, more clearly and more reliably, what is already present in themselves and in the children in their care.
When a teacher recognizes their own basic goodness, they are more likely to recognize it in their students. When they recognize it in their students, they teach differently. And when that quality of recognition becomes part of the fabric of a school, something shifts — not all at once, but steadily, the way seeds take root.
That is what this week was about.
