Chaotic lessons

Kalpana Sharma

Without order, nothing can exist – without chaos nothing can evolve. Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing – Oscar Wilde

A teacher’s life is a roller coaster ride, and yet, I have always enjoyed this ride. No matter how well one plans and prepares, most often there is something unexpected that emerges in the classroom. As teachers, we shoulder immense responsibility to nurture young minds. Our individual quest comes alive as we look forward to building connections with our children. Fortunate enough to be working in a residential setup of a Krishnamurti school, I have had many rich learning opportunities that resulted out of chaos in the classroom or hostels. No school uniform, no ringing of the bell after a class ends, no rewards and punishments, little importance to structure – a free flowing space, where there is so much freedom that it can lead to chaos.

There are some implicit incidents and many explicit ones that are an integral part of living as a community. That’s the beauty of a residential setup. Working in a K school, where a lot of stress is laid on interrogation and coming together in a space of freedom, chaos is very common. Having worked in a mainstream school earlier, I found it so simple and easy when things were structured and everything was plugged in the right way. I often felt ‘oh wow how disciplined! There appeared so much uniformity and equality at every step. When I switched to a K school, I found everything here chaotic. There was so much confusion and disorder everywhere. But now, after a decade, I can see the difference – here we have chaos on the outside, but there is order inside. In my earlier workplace, there was order outside but chaos inside.

A few anecdotes will help you understand this chaos on the outside and how we as adults approach it.

The slipper chaos

In our school, we leave our footwear outside before entering common spaces and classrooms. Often, the slippers are all over the place. As an adult, one can shout at the children and get them to keep their slippers in order in one go, but I have often been touched by how one of my colleagues approaches it. He handles this chaos by following the tagline ‘virtues are caught and not taught’. As children move to the assembly or their classes, he quietly sits down and arranges the slippers in order and in creative ways. Slowly, I began to notice that even without any instructions, children became more mindful about the way they left their footwear.

Snakes in the classroom

Once two snakes made an appearance in a classroom. I was not a witness to this incident, but my daughter was. As she narrated it, what emerged was that the teacher spotted the snakes first and asked everyone to calm down by taking some deep breaths. She then sent for help and got the children out of the class. As I visualize it, it wouldn’t have been that easy for me, as I am really scared of snakes. But it helped my daughter in many ways to handle chaotic situations like these, which emerge now and then as we live on a campus that is rich in biodiversity.

The little squirrel gets stamped

This happened during recess one day. A class 6 boy inadvertently stamped on a squirrel and one can imagine what transpired next. Several children who caught sight of this, clubbed together, shouting, instructing, and wanting to be saviours. It was utter chaos. Some children started crying as well. By then, the squirrel climbed up a leaf, but to add to its distress, the leaf was thorny. The children weren’t able to stand its pain and were somehow herded off to class. They came back after the period got over, I was watching from a distance, by now many ants had covered the squirrel. Two boys came forward with their teacher, picked the squirrel up and buried it.

That evening, post dinner, during our regular dialogue session, one boy mentioned this incident and thereafter what emerged was priceless. The children were able to forgive the boy who accidentally stamped the squirrel. They said that if one can’t reduce the pain for someone that is dying, we shouldn’t make it worse by trying to be saviours. What we can do is to distance ourselves and give space and time to that person. Giving ourselves a little space can help us respond and not react in such situations.

A talk with Chawanprash – the TIGER ant and the Incy Wincy spider family

Our campus is home to tiger ants. While the children already living here fondly call them Chawanparash, the newer children are usually scared of them, as these ants pop out anytime from anywhere; sometimes countless during the rainy season. When the new children see them, we have a musical melodrama in the house. One day a little boy just pitched in the chaos and started a narration, “Oh this Chwanparash family is now here and see they are going to meet the Incy Wincy spider family. In no time, a chain story emerged and the whole chaos died down.

My little ones love to talk so much

I teach classes 3 and 4. My students are so full of energy that it is extremely difficult to get them to do anything together. So, I often enter the class by playing a song to grab their attention, and play ‘Simon says…’ to settle them down and open their books.

Over the years I have realized that chaos is not bad at all. There is always something beautiful that emerges. We may not know it at that moment, but if we are able to look at the chaotic situation with positivity we can push ourselves to be creative, to think outside the box, and help our little young minds face challenges and support each other.

For me, I have always tried to take a step back, take a deep breath and come into the moment to remind myself – here comes an opportunity, grab it with patience and creativity. Don’t let it go.

“One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.”

I often remind myself of this statement by Friedrich Nietzsche and tell myself to take it easy so that I don’t lose out an opportunity to create dancing stars and also help the many young minds I am responsible for, to realize this.

Kalpana Sharma has taught for more than two decades in different places and grades. Her experience with under-resourced schools and educational colleges makes her realize that we need to work with children to address their different learning needs, especially at school. She teaches English and has a deep interest in inclusive education. She is currently working as Junior School Headmistress at Rajghat Besant School. She can be reached at kalpana.sharma@rajghatbesantschool.org.