A bit of rain, a bit of sun

The last week has been hellish, OK that's an overstatement, but it really was torture. From Wednesday to Friday, I would start feeling unusually cold in the evenings and then would catch a really high fever. In the mornings I would be fine. Then on Saturday, the day of my convocation, I threw up roughly an hour before reaching the venue.
All throughout the ceremony I seemed to be alright except for the severe dehydration I was feeling. After the event when we got home, I threw up a second time and so began the downward spiral of my health. I was put on an IV supply for the night because my body was just refusing to accept anything it was being fed. For some reason it reminded me of the man whose dead body the Earth would throw out every time people would try to bury it. (Will look up the reference to this later.)

That's how my weekend went, hooked to an IV after every few hours, stomach aching from all the vomiting. Even when I hadn't eaten for a while I suffered from these bouts of retching. In bed, I could see what a worry I was causing my parents. They couldn't figure out what had gotten into me and all day long would inquire about my health and try to feed me juices and semi-solids (which I would eventually throw up).

I did not go to work on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. Wednesday morning we finally went to get me tested. I sat in the waiting lounge with parched lips and half-open eyes as if waiting for death to take over. After getting my blood test done and picking up the necessary medicine, we went back home. 

The medicine worked like a charm and for the next few days, there was no more vomiting. I was finally beginning to eat again, although with caution. A liver infection had been diagnosed hence had to stay away from oily and fatty foods. I took off the week from work and was surprised to hear the concern and recommendations to get plenty of rest from my work administration. What is the world coming to?

Talking to my co-fellows I got to know that there had been a break-in situation too where someone managed to get inside the school store room and tore up some of the charts which we had stored there. The stealing and ripping of charts is a very painful matter for us teachers who devote so much time and energy to making them. I once made a chart of a skeleton with all the major bones of the human body labeled on it. The chart went missing only after a few days. ('Someone stole my skeleton!' I had exclaimed gravely). Another time somebody had ripped apart the class goal of 80% which I had set up on top of the blackboard.

By Sunday night I was feeling much better although I tended to get exhausted pretty quickly. But still I decided to go back to school the next day. I was missing my students' faces and was worried that my absence would cause them to fall back in their studies. Monday was a good day, the students knew I had been ill and mostly tried to cooperate by being nice in class. Signs of the break-in were pretty apparent. The burglar had tried to pry loose the tubelight holder too.

'Who did this?' I had asked some of my students.

'Miss it was the Pathans of the area,' said the Punjabi student.

'Miss it was the Sindhis,' said the Pathan student.

I guess it will remain a mystery forever.

By the end of the week, as my strength regained, the students were back to their normal mischievous selves. With vacations coming up, I ensured that they had plenty of math homework to practice their multiplication. To my surprise, they were actually excited about receiving homework! Some of them cheered. Some started right away! Really, what is the world coming to?

I was pleased to see this attitude and am hopeful that they will have attempted all the questions when they return from winter break.

3rd graders enjoying Pinocchio (Courtesy: AM)

My co-fellow brought in a movie to show to the 3^rd graders on the last day before winter break. When I went upstairs to return one of the students’ notebooks, she excitedly gestured me to come peek in the class. When I went in, the sight before me left me in awe. All the normally hyper little students sat peacefully in a large group with their eyes glued to the laptop screen, watching Pinocchio. There was complete silence and they were actually following the story. I had never seen our students this quiet and the sight of them that way is now etched in my mind. We captured a few photos as they laughed at some of the scenes. The joy was contagious. We couldn’t help ourselves from smiling. Students from other classes also dropped by and quietly watched with wonder as the wooden puppet came to life. We decided that this is something we should do more often, i.e. promising movie time as a reward for being well-behaved in class.

For the last day before winter break, I had also written positive notes to send home to some of my students' parents. Now these notes I usually send home when a student outperforms on a test or exam or demonstrates excellent behavior in class. This time I did things slightly differently and rewarded the under-performers with positive notes because I had seen them struggling in class and working really hard lately. These were the students who had shown remarkable progress over the course of three months by improving their behavior. It was sad, however, when some of my students said 'Miss mujhe parhna nahi ata' (Miss, I can't read what's written) and so I read the note out loud to them and asked them to convey it to their parents. I think they were surprised to receive them, but extremely glad to have earned them. And so the day ended on a positive note (quite literally :p), with much happiness to go around.