Teaching for pleasure

But Fate had other plans. Despite the job satisfaction, Chandavarkar had to abandon it. “I took up a job with IBM because they paid well and I needed the money.” She spent an uneventful seven years till she married music director Bhaskar Chandavarkar and settled in Pune.

Teaching happened by accident. “I love kids. I’d rather spend time with a child than an illustrious person. But loving kids does not make one a good teacher. My first day was quite disastrous.”

Chandavarkar and a friend had to fill in for the two teachers who left Abhinav Marathi School without notice. “The principal was expecting visitors and asked if we would stand in the classroom. I agreed.”

“I began asking the kindergarten kids their names. Now, I know how wrong that is. Kids are not interested in giving you their names. My friend, who had a little more experience, began a singing session. That’s when the class came alive.”

Chandavarkar realised that being a mom and loving children did not make one a good teacher. “At that time, my son was seven. Big enough for me to start working. I did the rounds of all the pre-schools. If there was a good school in Pimpri, I’d be there.”

Her desire to learn took her to the libraries and kindergarten schools in the USA and Europe. “I learnt about education through what I saw or read. Whenever my husband would go abroad, I’d tour the schools to learn how they taught.”

“The Americans stress on learning by doing – a method which we, like sheep, follow. I feel our rote learning has advantages. Though understanding is important to the learning process, memorisation is necessary. Rote learning helps one remember and develops memory as a skill. In our school, all our kids recite the tables everyday till the standard VII.”

In 1978, she began the Grandparent’s Day. “Grandparents provide the soothing love, fill you with stories, and yet when it comes to participating in the child’s school-life, they are at the periphery.” On Grandparents’ Day, they come to school and are treated as special. Besides, there are several programmes that enrich a child’s life. Recently, she introduced the rhythm class where kids are exposed to the tabla. “They just listen. Exposure to music helps one in perception, to be able to perceive beyond words, to feel unspoken things.”

Chandavarkar admits she is “bad in singing, bad at drawing, in fact there are very few talents that I possess.” But her creative thinking skills more than make up for it. We crib about rickshaw drivers, their language, the way they spit and so on. Chandavarkar was concerned about their influence on her children. “Every year, we have a Rickshawala Day, where we invite the school rickshaw drivers to tea. It is our way of thanking them for caring for our children. I talk to them about the use of foul language in the presence of kids, of spitting on the streets. I don’t tell them to stop chewing tobacco or using bad language, I only request them to resist in the presence of our children and they usually listen.

Despite Abhinav being a `common, crowded school’ as Chandavarkar puts it, children learn plenty. Empathy, respect for elders, interpersonal skills. The first day of school for the pre-schoolers is not traumatic. The older kids `adopt’ a child. The mothers are allowed to sit in the class, and the standard VII kids welcome a child each and look after him during the break. “The parents are reassured and the older child learns to be responsible.” “My children should be happy, well-adjusted adults, capable of taking failure and success in their stride,” she says. Perhaps that is why learning at Abhinav goes beyond the classroom and textbooks.