I am a teacher ! It is not destiny that brought me to this profession. I am genuinely interested in Children and their welfare. Therefore, when I got a chance after a M.A in Hindi to teach in a school in Tamil Nadu to be precise Coimbatore I jumped at that opportunity. I hail from Punjab and used to live in a place near Himachal Pradesh. That area is supposed to be most beautiful and known as Shivalik Range on account of the mountainous terrain ! To move from that beautiful place to Coimbatore was a tough decision. I was many a time having second thought. But situation at
home and bleak chances of getting a good teaching job in my home town made me to grab this opportunity !
Here I am in an INTERNATIONAL school. In India anything and everything with a tag...NEW, IMPROVED and INTERNATIONAL sells. Be it Shampoo, Snacks or Biscuits. School is no different. But our school is indeed a international one with students from all over the world staying in a hostel of world class. The environment is maintained well with good manicured lawns, kitchen gardens, flower beds, shrubs which are periodically trimmed and pruned to make them appeal to every visitor's eyes. Probably one of the few educational institutions campuses which can boast of such a variety of trees apart from usual banana coconut trees which are native to Coimbatore.
I have been assigned to teach Hindi language from class one to five. Thus, I do not have any assigned class exclusively for me. So I move from class to the other every fifty minutes. I teach tiny tots to fairly grown up students of approximately twelve to thirteen years age. As this is a Co-educational school, I have both boys and girls in my classes. Though we have residential hostel facility mostly nearly 60% of our students are day scholars. They get picked up dropped by the school buses.
As a language teacher, you get to communicate with students very intimately and as people's rather pupil's person I get better chances to interact with students. In our school I have been assigned art activities. I train the students in Dramas and one act plays. Last Children's day my drama titled CHACHA NEHRU was an instant hit with all parents and students alike.
One of the duty assigned to me was to supervise children especially day scholars dining hall. They all get lunch break from 12 noon to 12.30 PM. Later for 30 minutes they get to visit library or meet any teachers in case of any doubt to clarify in the staff room. Therefore children tend to rush their lunch time and want to leave the food without eating the same fully, make the areas messy, try to snatch each other's lunch if they find anything interesting in other's lunch box. As a responsible teacher caring for the child's nutritional need as well as welfare I advise them to bring local snacks like Idli, Dosa, Parothas, Roti, Sambar Rice, Dall Rice etc. But I find most of the children bringing in their lunch box Bread & Jam, Extruded Heavily Flavored of a popular international brand, potato chips in pouches which has nothing but a few gram of chips and plenty of Nitrogen gas, left over cakes from birthday parties. I have no problem with any of these items. But the issue is all these sugary substances like cakes, jam etc.when fallen on the floor attract lot of flies. Our janitors have a nightmare latter.
Children without proper nutrition get later tired and fail to focus in class rooms. Another issue is mothers who are advising their children to take food from hostel as they are busy or preoccupied with other work like visiting gym, arranging kitty party at home at the neglect of their wards. Children come and confide in me as they can not cope up with hostel food when they are routinely used to domestic food.
So if you are sending your children to school please pack them nice power packed lunch full of nutrition. Your all other works can wait. Your child's future and health is in your hand !!
I as a teacher have more to share .......To be concluded ....
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