What a plunge school is!!!
We learn by doing.
As much by being foolish. As mad celebrants. Throwing boringness out.
While we study hard three quarters of the day, the last quarter rings in fun and games.
As the bell peals, a cluster of us spill out into the school lawns dotted with trees and ponds.
A drizzle doubles our pep. The trees, their barks and leaves are jiggly wet. Our wildings begin.
We squelch across lawns in squishy shoes coated in a sludge of substances.
We enjoy the fluid splish-splash sounds they make.
We touch jelly-wrapped frog eggs. Watch tadpoles eat their own tails.
And keep tabs on them till they spring bounce as frogs with their webbed feet and throaty rasps.
I am guessing the word jumpstart has something to do with frogs.
We match boys stride for stride and treetop to treetop.
Do you know you will find new worlds by hanging upside down?
The brain does its best work when not trying?
I am in my pre-teens but I am not pre-anything.
I, eleven years old, love learning from things around me in middle school. As I do from teachers and books.
But wait, I lie. I am going blind to printed pages in a few textbooks. I suffer from a drowse-disease.
One of those out-of-focus-eye-mind thingummies, a real illness, where I slouch and dribble thin lines of sweat.
Formulas and history dates disappear as words written on water. I worry.
I panic my mind will dissolve altogether one day. Poof, it will disappear leaving no marks or evidence.
Yet I remember every detail from classes on cultures, traditions, art and geography.
I am engrossed by impossible sums in math. I am no math-phobe. I moonwalk around percentages, areas, volumes and metric measures.
My friends and I truly enjoy films, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. For us, they mean here-and-now fun.
They tell us a zillion things…how to curl our hair, look spiffy in boots, download music, upload pictures, mupload and see what’s trending. They even allow you talk to people you could not have.
It is no wonder we are the Digital Natives, Generation Like and the Selfie Generation.
I will have you know our selfie-taking skills are now at a certified expert level and we can aim for Instagram nirvana.
But our teachers spoil our online life.
They say our use of ‘forwards’ ‘likes’ ‘retweets’ and ‘follow’ kills creativity and fosters vanity.
They are horror-struck with Zoe Sugg’s vloggings and Jeff Kinney’s Wimpy Kid in particular. ‘Unchallenging fiction’, they say.
They caution us against online dangers. Chaaya our friend gave away her address and phone number to a stranger and she got into trouble. So we know this to be true
Seeing the dangers we are open to, our teacher’s words on adult supervision set off alarms for now, but sometimes we can’t help forget.
When we use our phones on the sly, we get caught and are deprived of them for weeks.
It freaks us out. Our childhood turmoil’s with buckles and straps are back once again.
We spew venom. We think our teachers ‘official pieces of history’.
Our world is one of Instapoetry, nibble-sized films, Ramayana in 140 characters and a ‘giveittomenow’ culture.
They better get used to it. Don’t you think so too?
O11...
Oomna at 11
O8...
Oomna at 8
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Memory illusions: remembering, forgetting
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Madder than mad