Working In My Comfort Zone! Literally??

The family was shelled and all of us had gone haywire with lazing away in the bed and relishing savouries eccentrically just to be acknowledged in the status(whats app) quo of being together after a prolonged hibernation. My dormant motherly melodrama suddenly found the centre stage with all the flash lights focused at me, which would otherwise cornered and put off quite often due to the time constraint.

But for how long? Dishes cooked and done, excitement subdued, relations satiated and strained too…. the teacher in me was waging a war against the family ethos. The poor me stood stranded(like many travellers in foreign land), staring and introspecting myself….. “You have lost the skill. ” Skill….. ? Skill to mentor some 40-60 headstrong souls with just a stern but polite command. The scarlet tinges on my hands had chosen to be microscopic…no, not my haemoglobin level but somewhere the teacher within was sabotaged and gasping for fresh breath and a revitalizer potion.

Oh! Then the meraki moment, I was desperate for, knocked at my door and I yielded myself like a wanton holding my surfing board- the keyboard to the incessant web searches and computer applications. My WORLD WIDE WEB was trying to be wider but the sloth and snail paced 2G connection in J& K would vividly entangle me to circumambulate in and around the web. But again -the teacher inside me jostled me and encouraged me to be bold and behold! Behold the society with children glued to the screens and motivated me to reach the students through that forbidden screens , for, these once cursed panels were accepted as the new normal by each one of us and that too in unison. The social media was at the helm. Uploading my maiden video lesson on YouTube gave me goosebumps, watching myself on the screen amused me and filled me with pride and listening to my own voice was surreal. I found myself somewhere in proximity with well known navigators, astronomers and inventors. Ah! But the editing part made me realized the vital difference between technical corrections and paper corrections.

This techno-savvy octahedral incarnation of mine was striding in the deep ocean of the virtual teaching-learning platform that was indeed unfathomable, with each tentacle juggling gingerly with Google Meet, Google Classroom, What app messages, YouTube videos, Google forms, DOCS , PDF’s and the umpteen numbers of Google sheets to be filled in, leave alone the telephonic conversations with students and their over anxious parents.

Everyday was a renaissance as the mother-teacher duo would always be at loggerheads, though I was right there in my comfort zone-three year old’s voices went unheard, he was also left at the mercy of T. V. screen, savouries were either not cooked or their flavour underwent metamorphosis -to that of dark chocolates as the ignite of new learning had fanned the flames burning under the pots.

Home decors also had found a new definition with A4 sheets embellished with colorful mind-maps replaced the designer posters and window screens. Doors and walls were also renovated with mosaic printouts and handmade diagrams, carpets were rolled back to be the mobile stand.

The voyage was adventurous, innovative and informative and had certainly carved a new found niche for the teaching fraternity, yet the so called , “WORK FROM HOME” would be a cliche if used synonymously with comfort zone…..