Doomsayer (Micro Fiction)

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The tea and samosa could wait, Shirley told herself as she made to tear open the envelope an agitated parent had left on her table. She had ten minutes before the faculty returned from the dining hall to resume the parent teacher sessions. Shirley pushed her glasses back up the nose and held up the pale yellow paper.

Dear Teacher Progressive,

I am sick and tired of your patronizing and judging.  Please stop telling me not to push my kids and take some time off your high horse to learn the difference between nagging and motivating; diminishing and enabling; projecting and nurturing.

The air is thick with educationists spouting fonts of wisdom, Oh I have heard them all: just let your child be happy and stress free; let them follow their hearts; try not to live your dream through them; you could end up embarrassing and alienating them.

Have you any idea dear madam? Do you not smell the violence in the air, the lack of conviction in our leaders’ voices, the horrifying truth that there is no lofty peg the buck stops at? For all my desire to retain a benevolent view of life and mankind, the fact is that I see queues everywhere. I read and hear and feel the system that rewards ill-gotten power and money. Every morning at the bus stop, it feels like I am sending my little one into the war zone. Do you really believe that your polka dotted and star laden bulletin boards camouflage the real world we all inhabit?

Of course there are struggles and more but the most poignant of them all is my fight as a parent to keep faith and hope alive for my kids. I see strange things. My children come back from competitions with stories of favoritism and partiality. I shuddered the day they spoke of having their teacher suspended. I no longer know what to tell them about patriotism, truthfulness, sense of duty.  Anything and everything seems to go. There is that hollowness in the air, a dry throat-ed scratch to sounds of humanity, the public aura is clogged and clouded. A new attribute is being lauded in children: street smartness. Am I being foolish, telling my children to be nice and decent and responsible?

Petrol costs 71/-, the dollar has touched 62/-, hospitals take 20,000/- upfront for simple registration, food is adulterated, public transport unsafe, the land I just bought may have come with a forged deed, the courts are corrupt, schools overloaded, clinics understaffed, airwaves compromised, water and air polluted and you are calling me a doomsayer!!

The only armor in the face of this claustrophobic hostility dear Madam is education, influence, self-sufficiency, marketable skills. It is out of my hands. I cannot but push my kid. It is my moral obligation to equip him/her for survival in the future. So save your harangues on letting the kids be or else, for a day, only for a day, come wear my shoes.

Sincerely yours,

Middle class parent

Shirley looked up at the knock on the door, “May we come in Ma’am?”

She nodded, gesturing the couple towards the chairs. Folding the note carefully, she turned to the parents, “Please guide us Ma’am.  Our child finds it very difficult to get up in time for the school bus. There is too much stress in school. We want to spare him this daily hustle and bustle. What is your opinion on home schooling?!” 

Attention

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It will be annual diary time for teachers soon. There will be records to fill up; lists of textbooks and duties, method of teaching, detailed syllabi, workshops attended, special efforts for bright students, remedial measures to improve the weak and of course, most important of all, what inspired the teacher most during the session.

Inspiration!

The challenge is of acknowledgment. There are indeed two levels at which the school operates, much like the Hindu system of consciousness levels. The surface is represented by its public interface. There is the school diary, website, speeches made on official functions, the school magazine, assembly addresses by school heads. One hears of the school being a tree of knowledge, a centre for learning, the nursery that nurtures leaders and aims at an all-round development. There is another level however, at which young lives singe and burn in the cauldron called school life. It is not obvious to the eye but there are daily glimpses in student aggression, in creative graffiti, in groupism, in exclusion of others, in bullying and risky behaviour. As a teacher, you would wish for a horizon where these two worlds converged.

It has to start with the question of what schools are trying to do. The staff, the resources, the CBSE, the related paraphernalia; do we have a system that focuses on empowering a student or eliminating him at various levels? Do we celebrate or crush differences? Are we building young people who are force multipliers or are we churning out force dividers?

At the moment, there is a focus on a version of discipline based on a strong sense of shame. The measuring scale has been marking only one unit: test scores. There is an ocean of untapped original talent that has been drying up for lack of attention and recognition. While we could be learning from students who have things to say, we line them up for scrutiny under glasses tinted with pre conceived notions. And the outcome is legions of young who leave schools feeling an odd mix of grief and relief.

CCE! The “continuous and comprehensive evaluation of students that covers all aspects of their development” may correct that by forcing teachers to look at their students more closely. We keep bemoaning their lack of attention in class. It is we in fact who need to pay them more attention. 

For attention gives life and vitality.

The Transition

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It is that time of the year when teachers sit shell shocked, gel pen poised over the final report cards. They shake their heads slowly, willing themselves to absorb the impending conclusion of the session. Any attempt to look back only brings forth a blur. It seems as though the year is getting over before it had a chance to begin.

It was no different the year before and the one that preceded it!

The school calendar is so choc-a-bloc that its sheer momentum numbs. There is a pattern. The year takes off well; there is the novelty of the class and teacher composition. But as the events come steam rolling, there is a Ferris Wheel syndrome. Students and teachers hang on to their seat arms, buffeting through tests, competitions, festivals, tournaments, workshops until their eyes begin to glaze over with the effort to keep up. And it isn't until December that they take their second look at each other.

It is the first time in the year that teachers will feel a pang. The students look dearer, now that they are ready to pass on to the next class. “There is so much more I could have done with them,” some are likely to tell themselves. Their eyes linger on the young faces, knowing fully well that most will be unrecognizable should their paths cross again.

The incoming class does not know it yet but the stage is being set up for the grand comparison. “My last class was so much brighter. You all are not a patch on them,” the pearls will spew forth over the first few months. Then like every other year, just as the familiarization gets underway, the Sports Day and the Annual Function will rear their heads. It is in the translucence of the dust settling on these frenzied celebrations that the new class will reach its peak. In that magic moment of complete synergy between the teacher and the taught, primed for take-off, just as they are slipping into some rhythm, the tail end of the school’s annual calendar will loop into view and they will be off again, hurtling and careening through the remaining year.

The word is transition; it is a time for mixed feelings. There is sadness to see off a batch and excitement at the first blank page with a new class in the new school year. Welcome 2013-14!

(Published in the Times of India Student Edition on 27 Feb 2013)

The Legacy (Fiction)

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“I am Napoleon!”

Arupa Basu looked up. There was something about the volume and pitch; a shade of surety she did not associate with ten year olds. Her eyes locked on him briefly before turning back to the admission forms on the worn table, faintly irritated at the hot blast from the window. The Resource Center was on the top floor, a sauna in summers and a cellar in winters! Lunch was an hour away and she was only half way through the first day.

She furrowed her shapely brows, “Tell me YOUR name. Your full name!”

“N-a-p-o-l-e-o-n. Just Napoleon,” the young voice enunciated deliberately. She snapped him off, shaking her head and muttering darkly, “Parents!”

In her thirty years at this highly selective school, Arupa had seen the gamut of student body. She did not expect to be surprised any more. There may have been a time, during her first few years of teaching, that the uniform subjugation of free wills called education bothered her but twenty years of having taught the same syllabi, over and over, had put her in a pleasant stupor, primed for an equally long and predictable cruise ahead.

“Napoleon!” What kind of a name was that?! It grated on her ears. She tried curling her lips around the nomen. “This kid is a loser with that title. What a pretentious moniker! People will dismiss him at hello,” she told herself, turning the ignition key of her Sunlight Orange diesel Micra. A mere fifteen minutes later, she was letting herself into the quiet home, glancing at her husband’s garlanded portrait in the hallway as she slit open the envelope she had pulled out of the mailbox. It was a fund request from her son’s Ivy League school. ”Why would they bother sending these to parents of students on financial aid?” she pondered.

Arupa suffered fatigue nowadays. The government’s child friendly policies had turned the teachers powerless to check truancy. In any misjudgement, both the management and the parents stood firmly by the children. From an authoritative delivery of bookish knowledge, the school day had become about staying safe. It was important to be popular with the students. But with Napoleon, no way! What a name! “I must remember to air it in the staff room,” she turned in, reaching to switch on the air conditioner.

Teachers all over were struggling with an evolving role. In addition to the challenges posed by technology, the modern teacher was doing a lot more than teach. The relentless roulette of correction work, record maintenance, continuous evaluations, secondary duties and lesson preparation paused only for some moments of dark humour, invariably at the expense of students or the establishment. And with a name like Napoleon?!

Her reaction was barely logical, she knew. But the name put her teeth on edge. She declared to her colleagues in the corridor at work, “India ought to have baby naming rules just as Denmark so no name becomes a burden to the bearer.”

Days melded into months and the year avalanched on; the calendar term chock-a-block. It was during an inter school event that Napoleon beeped on her radar again. Their school registration was due that day and with all the noise in the classroom, Arupa was struggling to be heard at the other end. “Tanmay, Rishi, Priyanshu and Napoleon…yes, yes…it is Napoleon. N-a-p-o-l-e-o-n….you heard right. Napoleon as in Napoleon Bonaparte,” she glared at him, standing still by her side. “Why did your father name you Napoleon?” she demanded in the brusque tone of a veteran teacher, swiping her phone off. “I will ask him,” the boy stated gravely.

Before long, the march of the wall calendar swallowed up Napoleon. He moved to the senior wing, dropping entirely out of sight. Leaves continued to turn relentlessly until the day of Arupa’s retirement party, a decade and more later. It was attended by an uninvited guest.

“I am Napoleon’s father,” he was holding out a book to her. She squinted at the transparent cling wrap uncertainly.

The jacket read:

The other Napoleon

How my name shaped my destiny

Winner of the Man Booker Prize

She tried to focus on the echoing voice; the room felt oxygen-less, “I did not want my kid to fit in. I wanted him to stand out. It was my idea to give him a unique google legacy.”

Driving off, for the last time, from the black iron gates, the words rang in Basu’s ears, “Imagination rules the world,” Napoleon Bonaparte.

Note: Pics by author; art by students of AFBBS Jr. Wing

New Gender Values

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Teachers are human. They need periodic nudges to remind them how powerful they are.

The demands of a regular school day tends to lull them into thinking an efficient run through has been good enough. But every teaching day gone by without having inspired a child or forced them to think has been a monumental, criminal waste.  It is one more day of abandonment; another 24 hours we have left them at the mercy of the Radio FM blaring its Fevicol song, the late night serial eulogizing weeping women or a facebook update celebrating risky behavior.

For all the bluster of India’s economic forges, equality is struggling to happen here. There is a swelling unease at the widening chasms: Indo-Pak, VIP-Aam Aadmi, Police-Citizen, Traditionalist-Progressive, Dalit-Brahmin, Penthouse class-Basement underclass…all brewing under the dark shadow of corruption, a hazed out bureaucracy and our dyslexic government. Watching this national hutspot going bad is the mushrooming middle class, nursing its heartburn and fighting down a reflux.

The regular textbook can hardly justify and limit knowledge exchange taking place in the classroom under these circumstances. Students need help, more than at any other time in Indian history, to make sense of their environment. Indian ionosphere is sick with toxin. There are dishonest advertisements, sexually charged songs, irresponsible messages of pornography, pressures of competition and the constant struggle for acceptance and a dignified existence.

Parents are just about able to keep the physical nurture of their progeny going in a system that will not guarantee them efficiency nor safety and certainly not any facility. That leaves the teachers with class rooms that have become the new ground zero, the only spaces with a semblance of sanctity, authority and naivety conducive to instilling healthy beliefs. The software wiring of young minds has to happen in schools while the students are young enough to harbour an inherent sense of right and wrong, fair and unjust.

Teachers have to remind themselves often of the huge investments they are making in their students. Their children listen to them. Classes have to be told that the human reality is changing and that we need new recipes for survival. They have to be spoken to of the skewed gender ration that is threatening peace and democracy in the nation. It must be explained how we are creating bare branches on family trees by killing baby girls before they are born. What are the surplus men going to do? They will live and roam in loose groups of unattached, unemployable cess pools of anger, with a nil stake in societal order; all the time blaming successful women for their own failures.

This generation must not grow up thinking that girls are fairy tale characters, and boys prince charming on horseback. Let them appreciate that the two genders are real people with real problems. They will see that the roles that worked when we were a farming community no longer apply in our modern, industrialized, information driven democracy. Girls deserve permission to be as naughty as boys who in turn ought to feel free to use their tear ducts! Boys should be able to study psychology and girls should be able to join the National Defence Academy. Far more than femininity or masculinity, it is humanity that our survival needs cultivating today.

In time, the young will grow up to realize the challenges ahead; the immutable but bitter truth that whenever a power equation is threatened, balance has to be wrested; it has never been given on a platter. For this, they have to develop an ease with discourse, debate, dissent. The current rigid hierarchical structures employed in most schools heap shame upon them. They need liberation to follow their hearts and listen to their own voices so they can grow up with a strong sense of self-esteem. It will be the modern young’s duty to contest and protest.  Every word, every thought, every gesture counts. Fundamental rights for all, irrespective of caste, colour, creed, gender, status, religion is the goal we are staring at and these are not just western values; they are universal, humane values.

The human race is in a process of evolution, of evening out power. The rich have fortressed themselves, much like the Ostrich. While the rest of us wait for speedy justice, accountable leaders and a protective police force, we can embrace gender sensitization. We can change our behavior, beginning with an empathy with our own and the other gender. It is time to examine long held beliefs and question the realities everyone thought they knew.

A very close, inter dependent and transparent world is growing around us. No one can survive in this spacecraft like claustrophobic closeness unless they are good human beings. Gender sensitization is a step in that direction. There is a call for systemic changes.  If we do not alter our ways, we are going to leave behind a terrifying world for our children. We owe our young the space and freedom to achieve their highest potential.

Teachers are not merely uniquely placed or wholly equipped to prevent gender becoming their students’ destinies; they in fact are the only ones in any position to do so.

Note: With cerebral inputs from Aqseer.

Smarter bus dispersal

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One of the most challenging events in a typical school today is the Bus Dispersal hour. A safe, speedy and smart see off is what every school works, hopes and prays for. 

The reason is not far to find. There have been spates of unsavoury incidents involving school buses. Remember the unspeakable tragedy of a girl who would be at the mercy of the bus conductor between the second last and her final stop. And it was only the other day that a year old boy came under the rear wheels of his school bus and died in the ambulance, on way to the hospital. There is a growing feeling that students are becoming increasingly unsafe in the school buses. Drivers have been known to drink and drive; some are not above misbehaving with girls. There is nary a day in fact that goes by without at least one alarming news item related to school buses. The air has been thick with talk of buses undergoing safety modifications including installation of CCTV cameras and speed governors.

Gone are the days when the kids would stream out of huge metallic school gates in a higgledy piggledy stream, happily chattering into the arms of relaxed parents. People lounged languidly in a laid back hush of expectancy I remember. There was a greater sense of security and far less turning around to watch the back. I don’t recall this jumping nervously in the skins at the slightest unfamiliarity.

Those were the days of a calmer, more content, well… perhaps even resigned and ignorant India. What we inhabit today is a war zone. There is anger, fear, even envy. A distrust of the government has so colored our pan-view that we are quick to believe the worst of the other. Unfair generalizations are the stuff social conversations are made up of. A civic awareness of rights and entitlements has replaced plain common sense and civility.

Schools try and compensate by laying out layer upon layer of security. There is a garrison mind-set geared to fool proof dispersal. It is a daily struggle to stay above board. 

The student strength and number of routes are only two components of a hugely collaborative effort. There are several agencies involved including the gate security personnel, private vehicle drivers, parents and support staff. A monitoring system is followed in most schools to try and ensure every student reaches home safely. There are cameras on the gates and regular dissemination of updated contact numbers of agencies involved.

In several institutions, the junior wings in particular, bus routes have been assigned class rooms as well as specific teachers who take attendance again at the end of the day, before leading their route students to the bus dispersal area. The children who use the second trip are supervised by teachers until it is time to board the senior buses. In this way, the double attendance works as a quick way to establish any anomaly.

Even so, there are the bad days. 

  

Two snaking rows of second graders can cross each other, a couple of frisky ones getting dislodged into the wrong row unwittingly. It may happen that a child is facing a bus a trifle uncertainly and the mere appearance of a teacher prompts him to quickly hop into the bus that was puzzling him! Children have a talent for losing track of time. While the whole world is going crazy hunting for them, some may be blissfully sliding and swinging in the KG Park at the back. The small ones also happen to have a penchant for escorting the ailing to the Sick Bay and losing themselves in the experience. 

There could be explanations galore but the mind of the parent waiting at home goes whirl-pooling thus: has there been a kidnapping; could the child have fallen into a man hole or else, God forbid, run over by a BMW; she could have been lured and raped; a custodial conflict pick up seems like a possibility and on and on the tortuous mind goes visualizing one gory scenario after another.

Nine and a three quarters time out of ten, there is likely to be a simpler explanation. It is very unlikely that a child has gone far and in harm’s way from the school campus. There are small things however that can be of critical help at crucial times. Entering accurate information for instance, in the identity cards and school diaries; labelling the child’s belongings; keeping the school informed of any contact update; all this helps. 

There are systems that have been worked out. At the heart of this elaborate blueprint are people. And nowhere in the school is an empathetic co-operation between everyone involved as critical as at the time of leaving school. It is a tricky hour. The students are excitable, teachers low on energy, bus drivers in a rush and parents in a state of expectant anxiety. At such a vital hour, many a times, the secret to success is patience. 

It is good to remember that checks and balances are in place and given time, everyone will be home, sweet home, sooner than later!!

The golden PTM

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On the face of it, this is just a regular Parent Teacher Meeting. There is general sprucing up of the premises, the usual written circular has done the rounds a day prior, carrying the official guidelines on an appropriate conduct with the parents, the ceremonials are out, bulletin boards updated, PTM related papers in order and come the day, the families begin to troop in.

The air is thick with emotions. There is nervousness competing with pride; guilt trading with fear; need switching between finger pointing and placing appreciation on record.

It has been several years but I have not been able to tell who dreads the PTM more , the teachers or the parents. It would be accurate to say they both experience mixed feelings. Teachers have been known to fret over the exhaustive number of adjectives they feel pressured into using; for the parents it is a day of personal validation, a tick mark almost on the authenticity of their parenthood.

Something clicks the moment parents lower themselves into those chairs facing the teacher. The curtain parts and the mist lifts, a lot many things fall into place for both of them. With experience, I have learnt to read between the lines and use that awareness to advantage for the child sitting sandwiched between the two points of authority in her life.

The format being what it is, a lot of the discussion happens over the child’s head and in his face. Quite a chunk is made up of annoyed words from both sides at times. There are serious expectations, acute disappointments, an impotent rage sometimes. I remember a father who began a forceful tirade, “Ma’am, she does not listen to me. That makes me very upset.” The mother looked on, maintaining a helpless silence as their daughter and my student visibly shrunk into a ball. I reached out and pulled her close, watching her mother’s eyes speak to me. There was a watery reflection in her eyes as the father and I thrashed out parental prerogatives.

Oh yes, tears are not uncommon. There is a lot at stake in the course of a typical PTM for everyone involved. It is the time for self-authentication of all!  There was this mother who was concerned about her child not reading enough, not studying enough, not researching enough! She had a busy job and was desperate to put whatever time they had together to good use and understandably so. In all her agony and fear for her child’s future, she had stopped seeing the child. I jogged her gently to try and picture what his typical day out of home subjected him to. She saw soon enough that what her child needed most was her acceptance and at the end of what became a counselling session of the mother, the two walked out of the room happily enough, hand in hand.

Another face is imprinted in my mind of a mother whose eyes welled up when her nine year old daughter turned on her with an abrupt, “How are you going to take care of my uniform? You are never at home!” And a father again, expressing anguish at how the family was not able to provide their son the care he needed and deserved because the mother worked in another town.  A flash another time, from a defiant eight year old, telling her Dad in no mean terms what activity club she intended to join up!

There are lessons that jump at me from this close brush with one of mankind’s most complex preoccupations in life, the fool proof raising of their children. The understanding is nearly crystal clear now, with the benefit of hindsight, the 6/6 vision that comes in retrospect, always but always and invariably when you can no longer use it.

The biggest and the most important of the golden rules is that the children need us and that they do heed us. They are knocked around so hard and fast outside; they do not have to be badgered at home. They ought to be able to come in to an unconditional acceptance. They do watch their parents very closely, absorb and learn almost a facsimile of the example being set by them and even though they may not emulate right away, the images endure, surfacing many a times, years later.

Parents exert a tremendous influence on their progeny. We need a lot more faith in the way we bring them up therefore! 


If we are OK, there is no way our kids are going to be anything but OK.                                                                                                                                                                                                           

I don't know

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There is so great a store laid by what the teacher says that by logical extension, she is supposed to know it all. By common cultural consent, the three words absolutely blasphemous for a teacher to ever mouth are, “I don’t know.” The phrase is a real let-down to her students. There is the purest incredulity in their vexatious and spontaneous exclamation at her reluctant admission of ignorance, “Even Ma’am does not know!!”

Yes of course, the tribe of progressive pedagogues who are comfortable admitting they will have to check and get back, is growing. The majority however, still labour under the pressure to know with a dead certainty the apostrophe ‘s’ rule for instance. Leave alone their students; they have a phobia of admitting academic ambivalence to their colleagues as well. A teacher not sure of her facts is the equivalent of a cardinal not certain how to baptise a faithful.

Education in India is convulsing, going through a wringing of sorts; the field needs a cleansing fit desperately. While several crucial, policy related factors are beyond the immediate purview of the teachers, there is one factor they most definitely can and urgently need to reform. Attitude!

Students have transformed completely in their academic needs and expectations of the schools. They inhabit a world the current crop of teachers is partially in denial of. In this environment, charged with the urgency of technology and sensory overload, it would be negligent and criminal to hold on to the belief that admission of ignorance is a betrayal of knowledge?

A lot is afoot. Oxford University is setting out the red carpet for ISC and CBSE toppers. In an international comparative survey evaluating the performance of elementary education, India ranked 73^rd rank out of a total of 74 nations, a whisker above Kyrgyztan.  My freshman daughter at Princeton University described the greatest challenge she faced at first as the acquisition of a most unfamiliar skill: thinking! While Kapil Sibal reworks educational reforms with a vengeance and Lovely Sweets goes from making ladoos to sprouting professional universities…we continue to pay what has been described as “the high cost of low educational performance.” http://www.pisa.oecd.org/searchResult/0,3400,en_32252351_32235731_1_1_1_1_1,00.html

At a seminar in school recently on, “Innovative Teaching Methods”, Prof. C. J. Daswani, Ph.D. Linguistics, Cornell University and former head of Non-Formal Education at the National Council on Educational Research and Training, New Delhi shared these gems with us: 
*Our job is to enlarge every child's unique universe of knowledge
*Innovation can be defined as any method that works
*Our students expect us to be their role models
*Arm yourselves with precise and exact information
*The text book is only a sample of what you need to teach in class
*A teacher who does not read every day is unsafe for her students


There are reasons I was struck by this presentation. Dr Daswani weighed every word he spoke, giving it the sanctity we do not, in the normal course of a day. He was 100% present in the class and he certainly had expectations of his audience!

I am the old guard, having studied Chemistry at Fergusson College, Pune even though I should have listened to my heart and pursued English Literature instead. It felt nice during the workshop to see an Indian ditch his traditional niceness for a change and make professional demands. I do believe we have not cultivated an academic culture yet that respects real awareness of knowledge and learning.


There is a growing feeling moreover that we are swinging the other extreme in our scramble to make learning child friendly. The question to ask therefore is, are our kids, beyond the high scores, able to comprehend, understand, evaluate, analyse and grow more competent for the real world?


Rather than the chaotic, confused, merry and misguided caravan that our education system is today, winding its  bumbling way through the maze that is the modern world, we need to put together our own educational Shinkansen, our national Bullet Train of learning and attitude. Not Kodama, nor Hikari but Nozomi, no less!

Sorry

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I work in the company of some remarkable women. Blessed with the gift of teaching, they are talented, driven, honest, the sorts to go the whole nine yards. Their students eat out of their hands and come back looking for them years later. These are teachers who work round the year with a group of children, investing their personal selves in huge,weighty chunks.

Their year goes by in a rush of competitions, exams, welfare events, exhibitions, school functions, seminars, result making. They keep at it, struggling to pack meaningful learning into thirty minute windows. Their special effort is visible, in polished cultural performances, in clear Maths concepts, in tastefully done soft boards, in the smart turnout of particular classes, in the unbiased and fair spotting of talent, in meticulously planned staff gatherings, in the quick adoption of new teaching ideas and practices…..in countless ways.

They labour over thermocol figures, report cards, registers, diaries, farewell notes to students, elaborate power point presentations, challenging question papers, vocabulary lists, exhaustive oral delivery instructions, spelling drills, parental communication……it goes on and on, extending to their own children in cases, who are without exception, all doing well for themselves.

One would think, this relentless band would be fired up with a sense of self-affirmation and cheer. Oddly enough, with all that they do, the one word beeping recurrently on their radar is, of the entire lexicon, believe it or not: sorry!

For some strange, incomprehensible reason, they apologise a lot. “I am sorry,” is their theme song. Wonder why?! And what for!

Help !

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Twenty five facts your child’s teacher may not have shared with you!

*When selecting children to represent the school, parental involvement is taken a hard look at.

*The child’s tiffin is a pretty accurate indicator of the care he/she is getting at home.

*Some children in her class, the teacher is just waiting to pass on !

*Even though the teachers advocate impartiality, they most certainly have their favourites.

*She projects students she wants to build up for future appointments in school.

*Teachers’ kids very often do better because their mothers are nervous of a poor self-reflection.

*An occasional note from home will be tolerated but a constant pitch is taken as a harangue.

*Most teachers keep a close track of what their colleagues are up to in their own class rooms! 
            

*Any stressful condition at home is immediately visible in the class room.

*Kids at times, do share confidential information with their teachers.

*It is good to pay heed to the teacher’s personal observation of your children, she is on their side.

*A good teacher works terribly hard, appreciation will encourage her to do more.

*Teachers love being remembered by old students, it is their chief reward.

*Parent-teacher meetings are not on her list of ‘best days’.

*It really bothers her when there is no response from the parents to her notes sent home.

*Students come into a class with a reputation and leave with a reputation.

*When across a child she has taught, she expects to be acknowledged ! 

*Your justification that the child does beautifully at home holds no water with her.

*Gifts are best avoided.

*Phone calls on her cell phone after school upset her balance.   

*It eases her correction work if the student reproduces her answers verbatim !

*A written complaint to the institution head has a lasting effect and not necessarily positive.

*The disrespect you air at home shows in your child’s attitude to the teacher in school.

*The pressure to go home with a ‘good’ or a ‘star’ comes up in class.

*The world is waiting to corrode them; we should let them be their natural, friendly and helpful selves in school.

Final word: Yes, there are some indifferent teachers, perhaps there have been some disastrous experiences as well but many teachers I know, want to do justice to their class. 

Parents can help them to help their kids.

Elementary sisterhood

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My Class on picnic, Lodhi Gardens

Yes, there is a difference. The Primary teacher spends her working hours on roller blades while the rest of them can survive the day on their own feet. The parity is in the degree of momentum, the pace and space. Junior wing is a giddy, slightly breathless place. For some reason, the occupants keep bumping into each other, a tumble here, a tumble there, teachers suffer shooting episodes of amnesia, it is as though a fast forward button has been pressed in the vicinity and before anyone is the wiser, the drooping Ma'ams are leading out the still high strung lines to dispersal area. Whoa, believe it or not, school is over! What did we do today?!

It is in this hive of a milieu, on the all-time gyroscope of academic structures, among a tight band of people tuned to shifting gears at the sound of a bell that teachers make it magically convenient to bond. The occasions are aplenty! A quick family update in the corridor, on the way to or from the washroom. Sartorial admiration at the stair-landing while catching breath on the climb up. Exchanging notes on the common enemy, over stay back duty. A smile across the auditorium, a look from behind the soft board, a gesture coming round the basketball court, a lot is going on in addition to the teaching and learning in that edifice.

And then, there are the things that are sure shot brighteners in a junior teacher’s day: a hot cup of tea, her steaming tiffin wending its way from the hot case, the eager beavers lying in wait for her bag early morning. Some more that keeps the smile on her face: an approved leave application, a substitution teacher who does not make her wait, a day when her ‘free’ period is not messed with by the time table in-charge, a prize at an inter-school event, an old student popping in to say hello, an empathetic ear from the Head Mistress, some praise from a colleague, oh they live for this! No, there is no denying their camaraderie in a non-threatening profession with nary a scope of any great meteoric rise for one of the band.

They understand what it means when a parent comes calling on the Principal, regarding one of them. They identify with the self-berating agony of the teacher who has crossed the line with a child that day. They can hazard at the reason one of them came to put a tick mark on a blank page! They know they can bank on colleagues for cues on the best tailors, jewellers, doctors and insurance agents. There are the universal undercurrents of course and the byplays as with any other professional community but the two issues I have seen dissolve the toughest of these pedagogues; in-laws and their own children. A whole lot is forgiven and overlooked if any of the staff is on the back foot over these two commitments. It’s a merry band there in-spite of the loaded day. Drawing, colouring, singing, dancing, miming, running, rejoicing, crying.

Show me a junior wing building and I will show you the hearts on display. It is elementary, the sisterhood and in some cases, the only positive stroke in a typical day of the Indian woman who is a Mom, wife, daughter-in-law etc etc.