Taking her class, to discover the world outside, to teach them, about the values of life, outside of the classroom setting, translated…
As the kids were off school, the campus became, especially, peaceful and quiet, there were, only a limited number of children who were, involved in the extracurricular activities, and the teachers.
planting something like this…photo from online…
Being too busy the entire day, I’d finally, had the time, to look after the strong beans that the kids had, plant4ed down. Because the children planted the beans inside the pots the students didn’t have the time, to set up the racks for the plants to climb over, I saw the vines of the beans intertwined, they’d, flipped over to the other side of the walls now.
These were the plants, that didn’t, bear any flowers or fruits, but the kids would, tend to them by the day, kept expecting, but, they still hadn’t, seen the beans yet.
I’d watched these, entangled, ungroomed, unmanageable leaves, and found, suddenly, that there was, a yellow-brown winged dragonfly, quietly, resting, inside this, miniature of a jungle. The dragonfly was colorful, it’d become, the one and only thing I saw, other than being overjoyed, I’d, called out quietly, to the students in my class to come look.
to attract insects like these…photo from online…
Worrying that we may, scare the dragonfly off, the kids asked quietly, “Teacher, in that thin, long thing underneath the dragonfly’s legs, a string bean?” I’d zoomed in, it was one, the one, we’d all, hoped to see for so long! It’s just, that it’d, looked so thin like the bean sprouts, very hard, for us, to connect it with the string beans, but the kids were so overjoyed, like farmers who’d had their, very first harvest.
This made me recalled Tagore’s poem, “The Flowers Bloomed from the Leaves Out of Love, the Fruits Formed Because of the Respect the Flower Paid the Gods”. Because of love, the most ordinary of things became, special in people’s views; because of love, that thin-as-a-strand-of-hair string bean, became a full harvest for the children; because of love, there would be the Chinese bulbul, the white butterfly, it’d made, our concrete classroom, become more alive.
Because there are the “children of love” here, and I was, bathing, in this passion that the kids have shown, busy as I am, I was, filled with bliss just the same.
This would be, the important lesson that nature has to offer to us, and that still just showed, that meaningful learning doesn’t necessarily need to happen inside a classroom setting, like how this instructor took her group of kids to discover the wonders of nature, outside in the vegetable garden they started…
Life, the Obstacle Course 