Today, 27th October, 2021 is one of the proudest days in the life history of Asha Chennai started 19 years ago when its tour de force, the running of minischools during the pandemic closed down. The day was marked by the celebration of a gala valedictory school function in which school children from ages five to fifteen participated with mirth and joy. It was also a day of when children had to bid good bye to the fun filled minischools conducted in open air, under the shade of trees, on the terrace and in temples to resume their studies in pucca brick and mortar buildings after a hiatus of 20 months. Tearful farewells between kids, between kids and the teacher seemed to go on and on. I wanted to seize this opportunity to interview some Asha Chennai teachers who have successfully navigated through the tasks of running of schools facing many challenges. I interviewed Kumari Lead Computer Teachers and Easwari a computer teacher

R Sundaram : Hello Kumari and Easwari Welcome. I thank you for readily accepting to be interviewed by me. You know schools were shut on 23 March’ 20 When did you start your minischool in old Panapakkam near Kanakammachatram?

Kumari : We started the school in our village on 3rd June,2020 the usual day regular schools would have reopened but for the government decision on closure due to Corona.

R Sundaram : The shutdown due to pandemic was nationwide. Government teachers were content to receive their salaries without teaching. What made you both to initiate this move to start a school.

Kumari : As lockdown continued for more than 2 months into June, 2020 we saw children in our villages simply roaming around aimlessly in the hot sun. They were losing out on their studies. Not only will they not learn anything new, they will forget what they already know. We wondered why we could not at least make them sit in some shade under some roof for a few hours and make them keep in touch with basics . We spoke to Rajaram Sir who gave us the green signal.readily.

R Sundaram : In June last year the pandemic was raging.Fear gripped people. Did you not feel it was risky to expose yourself and the children to a virus attack? How did you overcome objections that must have come from your own family?

Easwari : Ours is a relatively secluded village with not much traffic from outside. In fact, there was not even much awareness of the severity of both the impact and spread of the disease in the early part.

Yes our family members did object but did not prevent us. We practiced Covid appropriate protocols as advised by Rajaraman Sir like hand washing, wearing masks and keeping the children seated with some distance between them. As you know Sir, as far as observing social distance we had to factor in “children will be children”.

Kumari : Initially we started the school with blessings from Rajaraman sir in the terrace of our own house.. But around October’20 the pandemic reached our village and two people died due to Covid.We had to close down the school for about two months. Then we became like nomads. We reopened the school since the parents and children wanted us to., in Balwadi in January, 2021 . Even from here we had to shift temporarily because a girl(Harini-1st standard) was severely stung by a bee, to the local temple premises. We came back to Balwadi after sometime when more people started coming to the temple and finally we did a full circle and came back to conduct it on our own terrace. We had another accident when a girl (Rakshitha-5th standard) was bitten by a dog which had just littered outside Balwadi. Fortunately we gave her TTD injections in time and her parents too were very understanding. In fact the girl came back to our school immediately after treatment

Easwari : I must say here we enjoyed the support of local citizenry particularly Ms Rita.who is a Panchayat Thailavar.

R Sundaram : Other than this, did you have many disruptions because of family compulsions or family functions?

Kumari : You will be surprised to know during the entire 20 month period except for the marriage of my brother no family function took place. We did not face disruptions at all.

R Sundaram : Tell me something about the children. Their background, gender profile , regularity , and smartness and things like that,

Kumari : Our village is small, more of a hamlet and most are employed in agriculture. Many of them own small plots and also work as agriculture labour under nooru naal velai thittam. Initially they were skeptical. In June 2020 we had only 10 kids. When we reopened after closure in January 2021 we had about 35 children.Almost all the neighbourhood children came except a few who were in private school and taking classes online. There were a good number of girls. We allowed girl kids to use toilets in our house. We have a lake bund nearby. In order to make it interesting we used to take them to do PT regularly. Anytime, if you ask them what they would like to do, they will say with one voice PT. Many boys were playful but girls were well behaved. They all turned up daily neatly washed.

Easwari : The surprising thing is they were very regular. We did not have to do anything special to make them come to the minischool. Most were from primary class level I to V and a few even went up to class IX . There was even a case of a Class V boy teaching a Class IX boy how to do a sum. We worked out lesson plans keeping in mind the various class levels and also teaching arithmetic with emphasis on practical examples like counting seeds, leaves . We do believe they were able to retain what they learnt in regular schools and perhaps even learn something more.

R Sundaram : In that case how much would you say was the time spent on teaching core subjects like Tamil, Maths and English?

Kumari : I would put it around , say, two thirds of the time we spent on craft. PT, science experiments etc and one third of the time on teaching the core curriculum.

Easwari : I must add, In order to utilise the advantage of WhatsApp medium we maintained a separate WhatsApp group with the kids who had access to mobile phones and gave them worksheets to complete.

Kumari : I must further add here that in order to evaluate ourselves we conducted oral and written assessments of the children with worksheets prepared by the lead teachers.

R Sundaram : Obviously you both enjoyed the freedom in running minischools ? Did you have any experience that you would want to mention?.

Kumari : Our interview will not be complete if we don’t mention a boy named Kapish. He was restless always. He will run away to the fields. Before we ask the pupils of the class to sit down he will vanish. One minute he will be there and the next minute he will be gone. We consider it one of our achievements that we were able to tame his nature and make him sit down in the class and study.

R Sundaram : Finally how would you view your experience looking back?

Kumari : and Easwari : It was a memorable experience . Once in a life time experience. Guidance from Asha Chennai and Rajaraman Sir,- in fact, Rajaram Sir’s visit full cooperation of family and village folks, freedom to find our own ways to teach and above all the affection and bonding the children showed made it a grand success. Rajaram sir’s visit and interaction with the children was one of the highlights of our tenure in minischools.

R Sundaram : Thank you very much for sparing your valuable time.