The shift in perspective

 

After the grueling two years of college ended, my schedule was left wide open. My parents made me take up as an English tutor in a summer camp organized by my mother’s colleague. I wasn’t entirely against the idea but I was feeling rather unwilling to be up for the job since I am not good with kids. I have the least amount of tolerance when it comes to kids and I have no idea why. I don’t seem to have the hyperactive energy required to bond with children or the crackhead energy either.

As a child myself, I did not have kids my age as playmates after school. It was always my youngest sister with whom I played. She used to be rather clingy and wanted to do everything that I did (I know it’s natural for a small child to be like that and I’m not complaining). I was initially skeptic about it but in the end my parents told me that it will be a kind of personality training for me.

 My ears perked up at the words “personality-training”. I have a satirical, impatient and a rather un-obliging personality so I thought it would be a good idea to fix those three, unwanted traits in me. When I say satirical, I would like to add the fact that I am a merciless teaser. I have forgotten the amount of hell I used to get as a kid for teasing my younger sister, who first disturbed my playtime by being uncharacteristically clingy. My revenge for that was rolling my eyes at her and purposely pretending to be lost whenever we went out for shopping at the supermarkets. I used to dive behind the aisles before she saw me and wait eagerly for the whine that followed my absence. Inevitably, my mother or my mature elder sister would call out my name and if I was unlucky, I would be at the receiving end of a long lecture. In my defense, she looked absolutely, ridiculously- endearing when she had that whiny face as she chased me on her stubby, small legs (she looked like an absolute doll with the curly hair and chubby cheeks). Esteemed readers will probably point out that I was a terrible middle sister to her, but surely I wasn’t that heartless. I never complained when she poked her nose into whatever I was watching on the tab or even playing on it, I did not immediately lash out at her during one of her clingy moods, I included her into whatever I was playing, I was always the first to reconcile if ever we fought like cats; this is literally every sibling’s story.

Anyhow, I made myself ready to face kids who may or may not give me the test of a lifetime.

The premises were the most standard, well-equipped and aesthetically-pleasing premises that I had ever seen. It was akin to the play areas that you would see in IKEA; with an indoor slide, many animal plushies and bean bags. The most striking features were the walls that were painted to depict different landscapes. The main wall had a huge rocket painted against a backdrop of grey. Another wall had a blue theme to it wherein, huge shark plushies were hung against a background of the sea. Beneath the slide, the organizers hung plastic vines and painted the small area to represent a forest. It was completed with dinosaur and elephant plushies. The entire thing was so pretty and pleasing to a kid’s eye that even I was tickled with the desire to ride the slide and play with the plushies.The next room was intended for Arts and craft. It reminded me of the Butterfly room in Toy Story 3, with the crafty aesthetics. The room in question had a table for playing with kinetic sand and another table for building with Legos. Huge sliding windows illuminated the room and what caught my eye was the well-furnished cupboard storing all the art supplies, extra kinetic sand (bright pink in color), papers, calligraphy pens, slime activators, an entire unit devoted to paints, their mediums and thinners and a never-ending supply of balloons.

That is one dream cupboard for an artist (excluding the balloons, that is).

 

Aesthetics aside, the introductions almost ended me but I realized I am so awkward that no amount of self-deprecating jokes would make up for it. I was ‘as shy as a Wren in a hedgerow’( a George Moore metaphor that I learnt while writing this) but time demanded me to break out of that bubble and be a little bit more loud and out-spoken. As elegant as it looks in writing, my soul felt this close to abandoning me at the pressure it felt in being under the eye of twenty-five, judging eyes.

Kids are a thousand times more expressive and judging these days and I did not put it past these students either. I knew that if I was ever faced with a cheeky question or a bratty answer, I would never know the appropriate clap back for it and would shrivel with embarrassment.

For this exact reason, I told the organizer that crowd-control is a quality that I lack and I didn’t know if I could make up for it. He gave me a warm smile and asked me, “Do you know the Pied Piper?”

I wasn’t sure what I had heard, so I asked,” What?”

“The Pied Piper”, he enunciated.

“Oh yes! I do”, I almost blurt out in excitement. The sudden unlocking of this childhood memory made me excited for some reason. The organizer seemed to be well versed with books.

“You sound to me like the Pied Piper who would take the kids around by your words and have them follow what you do”.

He genuinely complimented me to make me confident but my stupid insecurity interrupted me.

You’re flattering me now, aren’t you? my inner monologue kick started at this point. But it sounds wrong to assume since he sounded genuine. But, I squirmed on the inside, I seriously suck at handling kids!

Later on, when the Camp officially started and the kids started pouring in, I was intimidated in general by everything. I was a novice amongst two, seasoned teachers.

The vast diversity of different personalities, of different ages, having various levels of energy took me off guard and forced me to wake my slumbering brain from its sluggish state.

 Breaking out of your comfort-zone sounds excruciating but I am not here to deliver the beautiful results of having to endure that. No ,dear reader, I am here to properly enunciate the pain and the fun into words. I am here to give you a thorough description of my one month time with kids that I thought I might never get-along with!  

 I planned on being as the typical, Gen-Z teacher that everyone thought was cool, but that required me to be up to date on what kids like these days.

What do they like anyways?! All I’m hearing nowadays,is that some kids are jumping on the K-drama bandwagon, despite the fact that dramas are meant to be watched when you are older than fourteen at least! What does their puny, twelve year old brain grasp from it, anyway? They definitely won’t understand half of it. And the next half is not family-friendly anyway.I feel like kids have robbed themselves of the pleasures of growing up by doing everything that is not required for their age yet. When I was twelve, I was obsessed with Harry Potter and Spider-Man. I loved watching Teen Titans and Danny Phantom. I actually got extremely irritated when they casually roasted a few cartoon movies.

I would like to finish off this part by saying that this small rant in the end isn’t even the tip of the iceberg. I have a lot more to rant and rejoice about in the next article. So, I hope to see you in the next one!

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