I. The Learning Odyssey Begins
Joash had his Kindergarten in Madurai while I was doing my two-year Masters in Communications program under the Senate of Serampore. In June 2006, four of us as a family moved to Madurai. Joash was 3 years and 9 months and his younger sister was 5 months old. My college at Arasaradi, Madurai was the only one of its kind in India under the Senate of Serampore for that department, and getting admission there as an independent student was not easy either. We had located a school- ‘Helen Matriculation’- where there were also other children from our campus picked up and dropped by a minivan.
Like most children, the
initial days of going to school were not easy. He would cry though not very
loud. He was a very active child and did not cry much. As early as he was 6
months, we had to travel by train from Kerala to Nagpur where I was posted. A
couple of the co-passengers wondered why the boy was not crying at all! After
three months we had to travel again, this time to Chennai to attend a staff
conference and it was held at the MCC School at Chetpet. Joash was hardly nine
months of age. It was in one of those classrooms, that Joash took his first steps.
But we never imagined our son would walk through 10 schools before he could
complete his 10th grade.
As we waited at the pick-up
point for the school van, he would look at my face, he would be about to cry
and his eyes were full. I would immediately talk about the green striped van,
the color of the seat, and ask him where he would like to sit. He would answer
his preference and would be hesitantly getting in and I would go to the other
side and see him off. For several days, I had to initiate different dialogues
to get him mentally seated in the van be going to school.
At Madurai, I had managed to get an idle cycle
from a relative, fix it, change the tyres and use those two years on campus as
well as to go to our son’s school. I occasionally visited the school to meet
his class teacher as we found it difficult to help him at home with the
homework sent by the teacher. We wondered why we could not get him to write
those easy alphabets. We would go out to the courtyard, and exercise drawing C
and all the other alphabets day by day. The teacher was very positive and would
say, he is playful, that’s all.
As an independent student to
save on the van fare and fees, the following year, we had to move him to
another nearer school where I could also drop and pick him up by bicycle. In
two years we were moving out of Madurai to Tiruvalla. I had planned to join a
teaching faculty at a college with the plan of doing doctoral studies after two
years of mandatory teaching. We were suggested by a close relative to consider
a small school where the admission process would be relatively easier. The
school named Bala Vihar, owned by a retired college professor was supposed to
be a concept school - "A small school for small children". That
sounded interesting and seemed perfect for us.
So Joash is off to school
again and starts his First standard.
Here too the college had a Matador van and it dropped off the children
of faculty for a small fee. We were living in the newly built faculty quarters.
Becky, the daughter of one of my colleagues too studied in Joash’s class at
Bala Vihar. As classes progressed we could see every day that Joash’s line
notebook or check box pages were mostly blank except for a line or a word on
top of the page. The class work of alphabets or numbers copying from the
blackboard was not done in his book. Then he also had to do homework on similar
things. Going to Becky’s home, borrowing her notebooks and getting all those
incomplete class works done, and getting him to do all the home works were our
regular homework.
We had to meet the class
teacher every term and explain why Joash, such a smart boy could not do his
work every day. I, am a Post Graduate in Commerce from Calicut University and one
of the toppers on M. Th. Communications of that year from the Senate of
Serampore found it difficult to communicate effectively with my little son’s
Grade I class teacher. Jessy, my wife, taking all the brunt at home was not
successful either. The teacher yelled at us, “What are you doing at home? What
is your job?”
It was the beginning of our learning too.
To be continued...
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III.I Belted My Son
