As I take one last gulp of hot tea from a roadside stall, Ronnie wickedly smiles and brings his hand forward with a congratulatory gesture. He just says – ‘One month’ and grins wildly! I wink back, pay for the tea and walk back towards the school gate. As we quickly make our way through the puddles and pits in the slight Pune drizzle, my mind wanders out in search of those small moments that I could call ‘achievements’ of the month thats been from my one month of teachers life. Sadly I get to recollect just a couple of them. And then it looms on me again how important it is to appreciate minuscule milestones in this journey – Something which I’ve been working hard on ever since the summer school.

Today for some reason, I’m not really as happy as I should have been. Administered a diagnostic test today and a perfunctory look at the sheets sunk me deeper in the gravel. These kids are just not able to answer even bare simple questions. I’ve spent about 23 whole days with these 46 kids and things do not really seem to be on the green side. Classroom and Behavior management still seems to be an issue and objectives wise I haven’t progressed much. They seem to understand Math concepts but for some reason that is just not translating onto the answer sheets. Collectively they seem to know how to reach to the solution but when asked individually they just put up a poker face. English for them seems to be a magnanimous monster lurching right round the corner. I’m yet to figure out where that small invisible spark exists so that I can magically tap it on and fire them up to speed. A couple of strategies to be implemented and a lot more are to be learnt.

Tomorrow marks a new beginning of looking back and taking the best of what worked; of paying attention and appreciating the minute ‘eureka’ moments in the classroom and not to forget – of understanding how close I could get to build the bridge between possibility, predictability and uncertainty.

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