Self Satisfaction..!

It’s great to be working again…!

Before I had started working, I had the whole day in my hands and just as much feeling of being wasted and becoming worthless as bills in water. Any working person filled me with an envy and wistfulness I cannot describe. I eyed people going briskly about their business and longed to be a working person again who has some important task at hand and a purpose in his mind.

It costs me plenty of strain, pressure and hard work yet I have no complaints that now I have to get up at 5 0′ clock in the morning leaving warm and cosy bed to make preparations for the day. I take bath, worship, cook breakfast and lunch meal for S, prepare H’s bottles, his breakfast, then wake him up and feed him while his eyes are still half shut, then iron clothes if needed; then I rush to change my clothes and get ready and then hasty teeth brushing and bath for H then putting on his clothes, shoes and all, then packing my bag and taking a brisk 10 minutes walk to the metro station, changing the train and taking another after which again a 10 minutes brisk walk and finally I am in the school. All this in barely 4 hours yet what a satisfaction it gives me to be a person of some value again…! Its not because I am earning money; its only because I have an important work on my hands and a work which I love doing. Working gives me a better self image and a sounder reason to care for myself then before.

I guess it is so because I had always been a working girl and so being entirely at home somehow didn’t suit me. Housewives had always horrified me and I enormously dreaded to fall into the abominable category myself.

Now in the crisp mornings when I find striding people primly dressed,  short on time, going for work, I realize with certain pleasure and self satisfaction that I am one of them too.

It is truly great to be working again…!

My German Kindergarten...!

My school is going on well enough. New session has started. A lot of new faces can be seen in the team as many have been fired and many ejected after 1-2 month trial period.

When I had gone for my interview about 4 months ago, I was so surprised that they asked me nothing, nothing at all. They just wanted to see my certificates which I didn’t have except just a few. Then within 5 minutes, yes within 5 minutes, they fished out the contract papers for me to sign and the manager took me inside the school to see the classes and meet my colleagues….!  The super speed and the absolute absence of any difficulty in the interview led me to believe that they take in any walk ins. But now I realize that I was mistaken. Two teachers who were good and old enough in the team have been fired because they were found to be not so good with the kids. A plenty othesr were recruited but dumped for the same reason. In the last 4 months I have seen at least 7-8 teachers to be fired. So it is clear now that my circum viat satisfied them in some respect even before the interview.

I find it extremely interesting to learn about their method of teaching and conducting school. The German laws state that no child under 5 years old should be taught any thing unlike in India where as soon as the child turns 2, he gets formal admission in a school and starts learning.

So we spend a couple of hours in school where we sing rhymes and songs, tell them about various informative things, build their vocabulary and language, do projects to develop fine motor skills and intelligence, eat, sleep and play and play and play. The whole environment either for students or for teachers is extremely relaxed, tension free. The student teacher ratio is excellent with every 5-6 students there is one teacher.

The whole school has barely 40 children, the number of students I alone looked after in my class in India..!  The school meetings are least like meetings; they are rather like cheerful merry get togethers where we eat and drink pleasant things and crack light hearted jokes about just anything. There are no  inspections by the manager. If we have been told to do something it is believed that we must be doing it and any thought otherwise just does not occur to the authorities. In India, the very sight of the principal used to send the teachers in a titzy and made them visibly nervous and the principal or the head was synonymous to unpleasant checks rather like a dreaded police raid on criminals.

The children love me and miss me when I am absent. Parents regard me plenty of respect and I enjoy every minute of my work here. H, too has thoroughly settled in. He is now in a different group and enjoys himself so much there that he often refuses to go home. Initially everyone thought that he was a spoilt kid when he used to cry all the time to be with me but now everyone knows that he is an intelligent child and that he knows a great deal which elder children even do not know.

So we both are having a nice time and indeed we both are learning so much. I hope and pray that  it goes on and on…..!