I was asked to teach Year 3 when I joined school in the Year 2006. There were two sections and the ladies in-charge came across as good friends and colleagues. I was replacing one of them who was being moved to teach Year 2. She appeared a little occupied with the change which required a lot of files being transferred to me and lesson plans that needed to be filed yet.
I tried to make the process as smooth as possible but couldn’t help feel like the outsider who had broken a comfortable set up and relationship.
The other teacher, whom I was going to team up for the year was a young unmarried girl from my own country by origin and came across as reserved. She had heard about me from older colleagues and friends that I had worked with, before taking my leave of two years after delivering my second baby. She spoke about relevant matters and kept the conversation short and limited to work.
My two year old son had joined with me and I was going through a lot inside my mind as well. The students had not joined yet and so he often dropped into my classroom crying or wanting to go home. I tried to deal with him keeping my patience, but in between a lesson planning session, I would sometimes lose my focus and my frustration would come through my voice. My colleague’s expressions indicated her reservations about me and the kind of year that would follow.
The year began. The children came in and as always, there was no time to chat. We had rooms opposite each other. The mornings began with a formal hello and we sometimes sat together at break time, only to enjoy our snacks. She carried a home-made sandwich, while I would always buy one for myself. She walked into my classroom to teach Math and I entered her classroom every morning to teach her class English.
There was a structure to her classroom. It was bright, clean and the borders on the soft boards were neatly pinned up with no edges. She had the book shelf labelled with subject tags and the notebooks were placed accordingly in piles in their respective spaces. She was every bit organized and planned all her tasks well.
My classroom was bright with many coloured boards. The corners that I had selected to border my soft boards were all abstract in shapes. My book shelf was labelled as required and the activities that happened through the day did not allow much time for a lot of cleaning. Still, before the children left each day, I made them collect the rubbish from the floor and dump it in the bin. I was always coming up with a new idea and being organized in such a frame of mind was very difficult for me.
We sat in my classroom discussing the lessons we had planned for the coming week. Her structured manner had made me a little careful with my planner and I had to keep everything updated to ease her discomfort. She on the other hand, was struggling with my last minute changes and additional ideas. She listened to them with interest and added her own views on them as well. Often, she said to me, “This appears quite attractive on paper, but I doubt if it will work in reality.” But she never refused to give it a try. I started to admire this quality about her.
As time went by, we began to understand each other better. She was not very expressive but registered all emotions surrounding her. I was a complete extrovert, and my manners and cheer helped break the ice that often never allows people to give each other a chance.
I had my strong influence in most of the school departments and each time we planned something new, I took the responsibility of collecting the matter and looking after the relevant arrangements. I felt responsible for the frequent changes in our plans and thought it was necessary to provide her with all the required materials. She appreciated my thoughtfulness and slowly began to volunteer and contribute generously towards our challenging planning. I met all my deadlines and she likewise, always kept her part of the deal.
Being married, I was a little more caring about her needs. Each time, I would visit the store to collect my monthly stock of board markers, pens and chart papers, I always made an effort to collect her requisition materials as well. She always thanked me and somewhere deep down, we had become good caring friends.
The corridor was filled with our laughter and silly jokes by the second term and it was then that she got engaged to be married. The news thrilled everyone and especially me. I was happy to see her smiling face each morning. She would sometimes run to my classroom to show me a special gift.
The year was coming to an end and we had to plan our Annual Exhibition. That meant, we had to think of a theme for our classrooms and exhibit the students work accordingly. Both of us wanted to create something big. We decided on drawing and painting huge cut-outs that would carry the student activities. We embarked on this cumbersome journey and it took us two complete weeks to create our magical cut-outs with the help of our students. The last two pieces were painted and we left them all to dry closing the door to the classroom. As we walked to the gate, we shared our joy at being able to complete the task in time to put it up on the walls for the exhibition which was marked in two days.
The next day, I entered the corridor and found my friend in a state of shock. “What happened?” I asked her feeling worried. “All our work has vanished! There is nothing in the classroom!” I comforted her a little, “Maybe, it was collected and placed somewhere else.” “I have asked every one about it. I have a bad feeling Shama. Maybe, the cleaners who come in the afternoon have thrown it thinking its garbage as it was lying on the floor.” I was not ready to accept that story and so I rushed to our Supervisor for some help. “If you left it so carelessly, and did not inform anyone about it, it’s plainly your fault. You won’t be able to recover it now. My advice is, replace it with something else now. And please remember, there is no time, so don’t indulge in something too fancy.”
I returned from her office feeling a complete failure. All that hard work had completely vanished. My friend met me at the classroom door. “What are we going to do Shama?” I wanted to cry but as I looked into her eyes, we burst out laughing! It was a strange reaction to a very complicated situation. We laughed for quite some time analysing our fate! Then suddenly she said, “Ok, let’s see how many charts are left with us.” I looked at her in disbelief. “You mean, we will do this all again?” I asked her with my eyes wide open. “We can if we want to. We will have to stay back after school to complete the whole décor and I’m sure we can do that.”
We were fighters. We took to the task of reproducing our project work in a matter of hours which otherwise had taken us weeks. Everyone left at home time to come back refreshed for the exhibition the following day. We were the only two teachers who stayed back pasting pictures, creating borders and sticking 300 small footprints to guide the parents to our classrooms.
It was evening when our work finished. She had the car and offered to drop me home. We celebrated our victorious spirit by stopping at the grocery and buying ourselves a sandwich with a soft drink. All through the travel we laughed about our hop scotch painting, hurried cutting and camouflaged taping. We had come through a crisis letting go of our perfections and understanding the need to rise to the occasion with respect and dignity.
The year ended and the school staff held a special music ceremony for her wedding which was planned in the summer break. And when the time came to bid farewell, we hugged each other. She held on to me and cried telling me how much she would miss me. I was touched by her love and knew that I would miss her just as much.
The year was a successful one because, we had given each other a chance despite our initial reservations and opinions. I had become more organized and she was able to express herself with much more warmth. We were different people. But what remained common between us was the desire to experiment on each other’s ideas, and let go of our perfections to be able to become a Dream Team!
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