The hills of Almora, though beautiful in their own way, present a few challenges. One among them is the absence of a proper playground in some of the primary and upper primary schools. I visited one such primary school a few days back. It is around 30 km from Almora town. After a 1.5 hour drive, I had to trek for around 25 minutes to reach there. This was a simple journey (compared to a few others where I had to wander around for almost 2 hours in wilderness). Since the school was situated on a hill (with terraced pattern), most of the space was taken by the 2 classrooms, a small office, a kitchen for mid-day meal and 2 toilets. There was almost negligible open area to play games or run around.
For a moment, my own childhood memories rushed to my brain. Even though, we had a large playground in my school, but we used to get only 1 games period of 45 minutes (in a week), apart from the usual recess each day. I remembered, how I used to wait eagerly for this games period, where we used get stuff from games room like Frisbees and rubber rings to throw around. Sometimes, we simply used to run around playing ‘Bhagam-bhag’ or ‘Chain-chain’. During the primary classes, it was only a few special days, where we could get a bat and ball for cricket or racquets and shuttle cock for badminton. Whenever I go to a new school, the playground is the first thing which I notice. Games and sports, which children play, are one of the most important tools for their ‘affective’ development. They can even be connected to scholastic objectives, if planned effectively. I feel that a proper playground is a must for all schools.
I had already informed the teacher about my visit. I worked on storytelling with children. We all sat in a group and I narrated a couple of stories, trying to weave a discussion around them. After that children shared their own stories and then we had a reading hour. After the mid-day meal, children asked me to play cricket with them. I asked them where they played. They pointed up towards the hill. We moved up the terraced hill and stopped at the widest possible step. This was their cricket pitch. I was not surprised at all. Children always find a way to pursue their interests. As I played with them (ages 8-10), I noticed that almost all of them could count and keep track of runs and balls. They could easily add the runs to existing total orally and corrected each other if anyone added an extra run (or runs). Though, I had played with children during my earlier visits, to other schools, perhaps I did not ponder much on this fact. I wondered why we do not use Cricket as a tool to teach mathematics. That day, I requested the teacher to let us play for a longer time than usual. We played 3 matches and everyone seemed happy. The happiness changed to a slight disappointment, when the lunch bell rang finally. As the children settled back in their class, I thanked both the teacher and children for their time and took my leave.
On the way back, I thought about my day at the school and felt how children lead a dual life, one inside the classroom and the other outside. One life is that of fun and frolic and the other is of boredom and dullness. We can even debate whether the learning which is happening outside is more lasting or the one which is happening inside. To put simply, I think we (as teachers) need to effectively connect them to create a better teaching-learning environment for our children.