IN THIS TIME OF MIRACLES

Perhaps it’s because they’re ‘Religious’.  Steeped in the word of the Lord, daily prayer and commitment to God’s work, it must come naturally to them that ‘what needs to be done will be done’, even if it takes a miracle to see things through. Times without number I’ve exclaimed, ‘Sister, you’re asking for a miracle!’ and Sister will calmly reply, ‘Yes.’

 

I’ve also lost count of the innumerable times that I have emphatically stated, ‘It simply cannot be done,’ and Sister has replied, ‘Just do it!’

We have an annual day coming up and, against the odds, we have a program to execute. Limited time, limited resources, limited talent, myriad things to do and it must all come right on the day. Perfection is demanded. Teachers are harried, children are hustled, helpers scurry, suppliers are summoned – there is an air of frantic anticipation and the tension can be cut with a knife.  Schedules overlap, tempers snap, rehearsals are called and cancelled or rearranged, props are lost and found, children are temporarily mislaid (they are on a quick trip to the loo and get ambushed by friends on the return trip), voices are raised in cross-chatter as instructions are called and countermanded, and everywhere there is bustle.  Harness that energy and you could light up a city!

Two days to go before dress rehearsal.  We go through the instructions, the sequence, the words, the actions, the song, one more time.  Will they get it right?  One child is out of sync.  One child stops to ask, ‘Miss, I haven’t got my costume.’ Another, ‘Miss, one girl is absent.  Should we keep her place?’ Another, ‘Miss, I need the bathroom.’ I take a deep breath and let it out. The costume problem is sorted out.  The absent girl is relegated to the back row if at all she turns up for dress rehearsal and the children are given a collective bathroom break. And we start again.  Now, there are two children out of sync.  We stop and practice the actions once again.  Everybody is together.  So, we sing.  They lose their note and do not notice!  (It’s good to remember that ‘sing’ is used more figuratively than literally – our children’s voices are not music to the ears).  I make them revise the tonic sol fa and we start again.  One, two, three, go! We get through the song with more enthusiasm than finesse.  Isn’t that what children are all about? I hope so.  Because, by now I’m limp, wrung out, brain dead.  Never mind.  There’s always tomorrow.  And then the event will be over before you know it.  If I survive till then.

Will everything go right on the day? 

I couldn’t say for sure.  What I do know is that it will take a miracle!

My childhood was a song!

And it’s a recurring melody.  I have just hummed my way through Que Sera Sera, Little Sir Echo, Mockingbird Hill, Look to the Rainbow, Somewhere and Wooden Heart. (Once again, thank you YouTube - I am young again).   It’s amazing how the lyrics come back almost word perfect.  And it’s also amazing how new lyrics suggest themselves too.  Here’s a sample (I’ve called it A Teacher’s Song!):

Sit down, be quiet;

Oh, please don’t be so rude!

Sit down, be quiet;

Be nice as li’l girls should!

Sit down, be quiet;

You must obey the rule.
Though life is no party

School could be so cool!

Children are lovely,

That’s what I was told.

Children are playful,

So happy to behold.

Little girls are sugar

And everything that’s nice.

Ribbons and pretty frocks

And life that’s full of spice.

On the day I came to school

This is what I found:

Lots and lots of little girls

Running all around.

“Miss, she took my bottle”

“Miss, she pulled my hair”

Little voices shouting loud

Here and there, and there!

Little girls as good as gold

Is truly quite a myth.

They can throw real tantrums

And make me have a fit.

And though I sometimes roll my eyes,

And shout as loud can be

I wouldn’t really change a thing -

School’s pretty fine to me!

Repeat: Sit down, be quiet....

Do you think they might listen?

A Tangled Thread…

TANGLED!

My blogs these days seem much of a piece – all about school.  But that is where my head is and where I am urging my heart to follow.

Each day brings something new, a high, a low and an in-between.  A child who will smile, a child who will frown, a child who will be more stubborn than a mule.  The mule I would ignore. The child stays with me even after the school day is done.  What could I / should I have done differently? Why was that one child so determined to challenge authority?  And why do I have to keep laying down the law?  A neat, tidy, orderly and silent classroom seems so at odds with lively, squirming children!!  But how lovely is the noiseless room, with minds engaged and thoughts abloom (even if they are all about getting even with the teacher!).

Singing class seems to be more about letting off steam than learning the tonic solfa and oh how they love their action songs. Even the ‘big’ girls!! When they’re happy, they really show it from the clapping, to the stomping and the screaming.  Next week, I’m planning on teaching them homemade percussion: if noise appeals then why not go the whole way? (A variation on ‘if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’!)  I remember the fun we had, as children, tapping teaspoons, shaking little boxes filled with rice or hard grain and blowing through combs covered with tissue paper.  If you can think up any more impromptu ‘instruments’, do let me know.  (We also tapped teaspoons on the rims of glasses of water filled to different levels – when you got it right, you created the sweetest sound.  But we are too many, and glass and water can be so accident prone.)

And then there’s the crochet which is more ‘is not’ than ‘is’.  Teaching 60 plus students to simultaneously put hook to wool and turn out identical perfect stitches is the stuff of movies and dreams.  The variations on a stitch that I encounter are more the stuff of nightmares.  Perseverance is a virtue that both teacher and student need and I’m resolute, persistent, unrelenting, firm about reaching the goal!!

But there are the diversions.  One student managed to get a factory wound perfect ball of wool into an even more perfect tangle.  ‘Miss,’ she wailed, ‘HELP!’  I brought the yarn home and spent the best part of an hour following one end till it met the other and I had, once more, a well wound ball of yarn.  It was a happy shade of yellow and while hands were busy, my mind dwelt on the weeks gone by. Sitting and untangling the thread was somehow peaceful and yes, amusing!  And the student’s joyful whoop, ‘THANK YOU” was more than enough reward. 

Though I am still bemused by where I find myself, I have stopped wondering about the path, no matter how tangled. Like Theseus, I hold one end of the thread in my hands, but I know that the other end is firmly in God’s clasp.  And when the ends meet, I will be a perfectly wound ‘yarn’.  (Pun intended!) 

P.S. I finally managed to ‘draw’ using Paint.  My work of art? TANGLED!!

I Teach therefore I Speak

Some years ago, a friend of mine who is not so conversant with the finer nuances of the English tongue and who was a working mother at the time, told me that she had placed her toddler daughter in a ‘crush’ (sic)!!  I gently advised her that crèche was the appropriate word and pronunciation.  When I visited the premises with her to pick up the child at the end of the day, I realised that she had inadvertently bestowed the more appropriate title – a crush it was.  There were so many children crammed into the room that all you could see were an entanglement of little hands and feet and bobbing faces accompanied by an uproar of little voices.

Today’s classrooms are a spillover of this scene.  Not quite Dante’s inferno, but nearly there! What have we done?

The idea of education is practically as old as time.  Sharing of knowledge, and the ‘how’s and ‘why’s of the way things were done, ensured continuity and survival.  As people evolved and curiosity grew, the scope of knowledge expanded proportionately and each generation added its own layers.  The only difference between earlier generations and ours is that knowledge was the prerogative of the elite and was shared only with the privileged few.  The remainder were left in the dark, exploited as menials and deprived of rights since they ‘did not know any better’.

I like to think that it was the Catholic Missionaries who wrought a change; who realised that education and knowledge meant empowerment and in an ideal world, where all are meant to be equal, an equal access to education would make a sound beginning. Revolutionary? Yes!!  Catholic education has made its mark worldwide and ‘convent educated’ was, at one time, an unofficial ‘magna cum laude’.  Why the past tense?

A peek into today’s classroom shows us a Catholic education system that is a shadow of its former self.  No longer are we the innovators and propagators.  Instead, we meekly allow ourselves to be dictated to by an authority that has no business to be in authority. True learning and all-round development are slowly being stifled by a prescribed syllabus that has nothing to do with education.  The number of children per classroom is ridiculously out of proportion with the need for teacher-student interaction, and the powers that be need to be reminded that bricks and mortar are rigid by nature and therefore the number of desks and benches can only go thus far and no further. The well ventilated, airy classrooms so conducive to learning have been replaced by ‘crushes’ stuffed beyond the limit.

Add to this the underpaid and jaded teachers, an exam system that rewards a ‘learn by rote’ attitude, and an unrealistic pass percentage that aspires to 95% and over: it’s not surprising that we are churning out mediocre geniuses, by the schoolful.

On the other hand, among the institutes in the city, there are a minuscule few that happily and resolutely insist on breaking this mould.  Why are the Catholic schools – convent and parish – not among this number?

It’s time that we stood tall and reclaimed our heritage. After all, we were taught by the best teacher ever.  So, don’t tell us how to educate, we’ll tell you. 

Dear Diary – II

Be careful what you wish for.  The wish might just come true. How often have you heard that? 

Crochet with me is an addiction and it makes me sad that there is no one who wants to learn the craft.  Not in my vicinity, anyway.

Well fate and the Education Board seem to be on the same wavelength.  The latter have decided that crochet and knitting are fundamental requirements for young ladies about to graduate from school. I quote (faithful to the original): “Crochet and knitting has (sic) been very popular in Europe and Japan. It has also been very popular even in India, where it is being practised for the last 200 years.  These two arts have always complimented (sic) each other.  It is being popularly practiced by women both in urban and rural India.  Woolen clothes are particularly used in places where the climate is extremely cold.  Those who excel in this art have been able to earn substantially from it.  Earlier the crochet needle was called a hooked needle.  Crochet is done by the hook of the needle, whereas knitting is done by two needles.  These needles are prepared from light metal and plastics.  ….Variety of attractive items can be prepared by crochet and knitting for e.g. torans, sweaters, shawls, table mats…. These forms have seen many innovative adoptations (sic) in new styles…”

Yes, the Education Board for English Medium, Government aided Secondary schools either needs to revisit English language basics or learn how to make use of spell-check and grammar-check on their computers.

But we are talking crochet.

The Principal needed a ‘teacher’.  I know crochet (I really do).  Put the two together and I now have 120 14-year olds who have to learn how to hold hook and yarn and produce a square handkerchief, a circular handkerchief, a small purse, a doll and a strip of lace by the end of the year. They are both optimistic and enthusiastic.  I hope I catch the contagion.

It is years since I stepped into a classroom and experienced the noise level at close quarters.  It takes some getting used to as is the: ‘Miss, please may I go to toilet’, ‘Miss, please may I drink water’, ‘Miss, I have to keep my appointment with the Counselor’, ‘Miss, she’s pinching me’, ‘Miss, may I come back into the room’!!  After years of just doing one’s thing and not interrupting the speaker’s flow, of cautiously leaving the room and re-entering, of being independent in thought and action, it is strange to find a roomful of persons chained to ‘authority’ (mine) and ‘permission’ (yes, mine again) .  But I cannot circumvent school rules even though my inner voice urges me to tell the girls, ‘just go!’

Strangely enough, I find other school lessons coming back to me.  Faced with chubby thighs and short skirts (yes, the mind boggles), I feel the need to tell them how to sit like young ladies: skirt over knees, knees together, ankles crossed.  The slump at the table is corrected with a sit up straight and I tell them how we had wooden foot-rules shoved down the back of our uniforms to ensure that straightness!  And then the thunder on the stairs is muted by asking them to walk on their toes rather than the flat of their feet.

The girls regard me with amusement and I am not surprised.  At 61 I am a species of dinosaur. The nice and friendly kind, I hope.

Water into Wine

When a Jesuit friend asked me to teach writing skills to his students, I was tickled all the shades of the rainbow.  I pointed out that while I loved to write, I had neither qualifications, training nor the necessary experience to teach.  His response? Just do it! (Yes, he beat Nike to that slogan though not everyone knows it)

Fortunately, my first student had a decent grounding in the basics and her writing skills did need some direction which was within my scope to offer.  We hit it off beautifully and went from strength to strength.  As a test case, this one was definitely A-OK.  As I taught, so did I learn.  As I answered, I found new questions of my own.  And as the students increased in number, so did my interest in the form and medium – the Internet. Five years on, I was fairly seasoned!

Today’s papers brought the news that 55 year olds, with no apparent handicap other than that they had retired from gainful employment, were joining retirement day-care centres.  I, too, had hoped that retirement would bring a comfortable chair, a lazy day, a good book, background music and perhaps a little chit-chat with like minded friends.  Not so.  At 61, I am still struggling to fit 28 hours into the 24.  

Now, a nun who is Principal of her school has decided that I should teach her children to sing.  I can manage Happy Birthday and play the scale of C-major on the keyboard with enviable accuracy but teach music?  I don’t think so.  Sister thinks otherwise.  Just do it (Nike again!).  In the meantime, I have found that with practice my repertoire of key signatures has grown – I now no longer blanch at 4 sharps or flats – and  I can accompany the choir and cantor at Mass without any ‘ouch’ moments.  Except when they hit a wrong note despite my hitting the right key.

I have made the discovery that a very ordinary talent can be coaxed to the next level especially when it is being prodded vigorously in the rear!

I have also made the discovery that retirement has its own interpretations.  Not everyone refers to the same dictionary.

And it appears that the Lord has never stopped changing water into wine.  Wine improves with age.  At 61, I give myself the compliment – con brio!

Thank you for the music….

She is a fairly active 89 nudging 90, but in my mind she is still the young nun with sparkling eyes and a happy smile.  She taught me science in school and the piano outside school hours.  There was something about her: Joy? Infectious enthusiasm? The love of children? The love of sharing? Perhaps it was a combination of all and more, but we loved her and loved to be in her company.  She taught and we learnt, seemingly effortlessly.

Sr. Genevieve is a childhood memory.  I last encountered her when I was eleven years old at Maria Goretti Convent School, Bareilly, some fifty years ago!  Another time, another place. By some strange coincidence, I was able to catch up with her again, and that too at a time in my life when I was retraining my keyboard skills after a long (make that very long) hiatus. I bumped into a couple of Canossian nuns, enquired after her and was provided a postal address in Belgaum, to which I sent a tentative missive.  Would she remember me?  She did!  And now we enjoy a sporadic correspondence.  She is still buoyant, still encouraging, still affectionate – not deterred by age or infirmity.  And she still teaches music!

I have neither training nor experience to teach, but thanks to the eternal optimism which afflicts most religious, another nun has roped me in to teach her ‘little ones’ how to sing.  It seems as though a circle has been drawn over time – what I have learnt, I will now pass on.  

I am grateful for not just the imprinted memories of ‘do-re-mi…’ and childhood songs, but also the example of patience, encouragement and the gentle humour which accompanied the lessons.  

Sr. Genevieve, you were and are the perfect mentor. Thank you for the music. Thank you for being you.

Hello Mr. Chips!

How I love the story with its sonorous roll-call. A diffident schoolmaster who grew into his job and finished his tenure magna cum laude! No thrills, no titillation and a sad ending. Yet it is a story that I have returned to again and again and it never disappoints.

Though I come from a long line of teachers, if the family tree is to be believed, I never wanted to teach having seen first-hand what it entailed. So, even though most of my classmates went on to do their B.Eds, I chose to explore other pastures. But one can never escape one’s genes, or so it seems: post retirement, I was roped in to teach via the Internet – I became an e-teacher! Now, once again, I have ‘retired’ and can indulge in reminiscence.

Aditi, Amita, Anuradha, Avantika……Deepti, Delna….. Gayatri, Gulveen…. Harsha…… Kadambari, Karishma …..Maclean, Misha, Moumita…. Nandita, Neeti …..Payal, Pervin, Pragya, Prakash, Priya… Rajshree, Rishabh, Roheena…. Sahaaj, Salil, Samalin, Subhash, Swapnila…. Tanvi, Tawina …..Vivek ……

…… they were just names to me till they started sending in their assignments. Gradually, I got to know them through their writing: some were eager, some recalcitrant, some energetic, some lethargic, some receptive, some quite deaf to advice. There were those who showed sparks of genius and there were the strugglers. They were diverse in attitude and capability – a motley crew - and they provided a challenging audience. It was only later, when circumstances allowed me to access their personal data on the Institute’s files, that I realized that some of the younger students were incredibly adult and some of the adults were incredibly young! How revealing our writing can be!! There was one student who fluctuated between maturity and a typical teenager, for want of a better description (I have yet to meet two teenagers who were similar – so what makes ‘typical’?) that I was tempted to ask whether I was dealing with two persons instead of one. I later learnt that the student’s mother was a teacher and had helped her with some of the assignments!

All in all, it was an exceptional experience and a learning curve – teaching over the Internet and interacting solely through the written word which, coincidentally, the courses were all about: News Reporting in the print media, Short Story Writing, Feature Writing and Practical English.

I was often amazed at the feedback – the very eclectic selection of poems and book titles that were sent in as personal preferences for the requested reports. This forced me to read books that I would never have looked at previously. Some books I would still not read anyway, but others made me realize that to teach, one had to expand one’s tastes. I also had to study like I never had before. I was, in my time, a questioning student and I was glad to find that my students were also interrogative, some of them fiercely so. The icing on the cake? Each and every participant in the Distance Education Program was there because he or she wanted to be there. It was a very personal interest that brought them to the courses and, therefore, they were a captive – and captivating! - audience. Here was no ‘whining schoolboy with his satchel and shining morning face creeping like a snail unwillingly to school’.

Have I, like all teachers, touched tomorrow? I think so. Have I made a difference for the better? I hope so. Did I love ‘teaching’? I know so!