Garden runs to virtual classes in a gap year

IT FEELS SURREAL TO NOW SEE THEM HOMEBOUND IN THEIR OWN LITTLE CORNERS, ADAPTING TO A NEW WAY OF EDUCATION

I’m content watching her work in the kitchen garden as she plucks ripe tomatoes and looks wistfully at the white eggplants, not yet ready for picking. Life has slowed down and I want us to make the most of it. For once, making the most translates into not trying to achieve a lot.

With the pandemic showing no signs of abating, I mentally prepare myself to treat 2020 as a gap year, a year when spontaneity takes over structure. The possibilities of learning differently are endless. Paint without fear of judgement, dance to self-choreographed compositions, bake a cake, make up your own stories and narrate.

She would wake up early and have her meals on time. Everything

else would fall into fluid scheduling. She would cycle in the driveway to her heart’s content as I put brakes on a hurried pace of life of the morning rush, the usual scramble to finish homework in the evening and driving down to places for hobby classes.

However, soon enough, her dance teacher begins lessons online. We wouldn’t want to miss out on the riyaaz and isn’t dance a form of mediation, too. We enroll, after all it’s just twice a week. She still has plenty of time for everything else I’ve envisioned for her.

And then her art teacher too rolls out her own schedule and the things on her list are seemingly tempting: 3-D paintings, tribal art, doodling, drawing symmetrical figures to name a few. We agree to fit in two more days of virtual classes for art.

Sooner than expected, the school puts in place a well-coordinated system of online lessons and assignments. I had hoped that at least for a couple of months, the weary minds of children would get a respite from the curriculum. Even so, I remind myself that just like I feel art and dance are too important to be missed out during the pandemic, won’t there be parents who feel the same about math, science and languages?

So, my little one and me, start oscillating again in a world of arteries and veins, countable-uncountable nouns and place value charts.

The teaching modules commence online and I’m left awestruck at the creativity of the teachers. While everybody else was in a state of limbo, they created engaging videos with eyecatching craft work, even in times of limited availability of material, coupled with discreet use of technology. They marked up quiet corners in their homes to conduct their classes and at the same time managed to look presentable.

I find my daughter brimming with excitement as she sets up her desk carefully, choosing the background. On the screen-share we see the rest of her classmates, the familiar faces I often see while picking her up from school and birthday parties. It feels surreal to now see them homebound in their own little corners, smiling at each other, away yet connected, and gingerly adapting to a new way of education.

The enormity of the pandemic sinks in once again as I wonder when will these children see each other once again in person, resume car pools, share classroom desks and lunch boxes.

The class ends abruptly after 40 minutes and I’m roused from my reverie as my little munchkin runs off to the living room to reclaim her control over the TV remote.