School chale hum.

Remember this absolutely wonderful song? It was a regular feature on TV and radio few years back. It was about the fun of going to school and studying there. It featured schoolkids going to school along with their chums and having a blast. Running through open fields, rowing through the backwaters in kerala, braving the mountainous terrain in ladakh or just splashing their in a river, the sheer energy of the cinematography takes you to your childhood.

Anyways, the point of the blog is about teaching kids. When was the last time you taught kids? In a classroom? If you have then you might share my views on this. I got an opportunity to teach 7th standard students at a Govt. middle school in bangalore and it was a very encouraging experience.

The school in question is a middle school with classes till 7th standard only. Not to mention its a vernacular medium school. Actually, when i got an offer initially i didnt think twice before saying a 'yes'. It was later that it dawned upon me that language could be an issue since i didnt even know the most basic of Kannada, with due respect to the language of course. So the only option was to communicate in English that the kids understood. "What a solution!" you would laugh but i had no option. My enthusiasm was peaking and there was no way i was backing out of this.

I was supposed to teach few computer basics to the kids, the software part of it to be precise while venkatesh would start of with the hardware. Now learning computers hands on is the best approach; but what would you do if none of the computers in the computer lab WORK!! So venkatesh decided that we should teach theory.

Teaching theory, in theory (pun intended) sounds easy. But with the constraints enumerated earlier it was far from easy. Computers as a subject in itself has a multitude of phrases, jargon, abbreviations, concepts which need explanation as we dive into any basics. Analogies are the best way to go about teaching these thing; but then explaining the analogies itself is a cul-de-sac for a guy with limited language skills.

Anyways, the language barrier not withstanding I reached the school a bit late. The reason being I had to take a few printouts of the info we were going to hopefully teach that day. Its would be an interesting post by itself, but later. The school was an 'L' shaped 2 storey structure huddling alongside a few residential buildings and houses. Nothing extravagant at all and rightly so as it did the job perfectly fine as was evident. The far side of the L faced the entrance and had the name painted in dark blue. There was the familiar drawing of a boy and a girl sitting on a huge pencil with books in hand. Its the symbol of 'Sarva shiksha abhiyaan' the movement to educate all kids .

Any school has this feel of enthusiasm to it. I see it in every school i see. Maybe its got to do with the kids. The insatiable eagerness, carefree attitude and the drive to constantly be upto something really make me respect children. We adults quickly forget that we as children might have been something like that in our childhood too. What makes children the way they are and us the way we are? That may constitute another post altogether so let me not digress.

I was not sure whether i had reached the correct place. So i called up venkatesh. He said he was on the 1st floor and would come out on the balcony. I looked around and instantly recognised the tall frame smiling down upon me from the 1st floor balcony.

I was introduced to other two people one being ritesh, another guy interested in teaching, and Venugopal sir who brought the entire thing together. The computer lab was the place where we were supposed to take a class. I entered the lab and found around seven computers placed along the walls of that room. One of the walls was taken by the blackboard and a cabinet containing books. The rest of them were taken by drawings who jostled with switchboards for space amid crusty paint. This was manageable if not decent enough. The tough part was going to be managing the kids..