Mr & Mrs Crow, Mango Tree Apts

Any learning without experience is incomplete learning. How can classroom learning be made lively and experiential? How can a word be transformed to be experienced as a world of its own within the four walls of a classroom? Here is a blissful experience I had with the poem, The Laburnum Top by Ted Hughes, which talks about a bird and its family of chittering nestlings on a laburnum tree.

It’s a bright September morning. I realised that teaching the poem was not the first step to be taken, and the beautiful morning with bird chirps drifting in through the classroom windows was a creative and organic opportunity I shouldn’t miss. We decided to quietly soak in the soothing sight of verdant fields through the window and listen to the melody of birds in the trees.

Tagore writes in Gitanjali, "The morning sea of silence broke into ripples of bird songs, and the flowers were all merry by the roadside." As they wrote down the sounds heard and the sights seen, I asked, "Do you see the staff quarters over there? Do you see trees next to it where birds live?" They replied, "Yes." "As we give names to apartments, birds too have their own apartments. Let’s name them Jackfruit Tree Apartments, Mango Tree Apartments, where on different branches, the families live in their nests." They laughed. I added, "Could you, then, give me the address of a few birds living up there?" Without much delay, Anandu said, "Mr & Mrs Crow, Branch No 7A, Mango Tree Apartments, Kochi."

This brilliantly imaginative and hilarious response triggered more examples. With merry peals of laughter and excited applause, the classroom transformed itself into a blissful grove of animated chirps and imaginative wing flaps. Keerthana had something to say: "Sir, this is the first time in the last 10 years of my study, I have opened my eyes to the trees and heard the birds. I thoroughly enjoyed this unique experience."

The book is a door to the world within and without. There is endless poetry and music in nature. "Have you ever wondered about the flowers and birds on our campus? An education that doesn’t awaken you to the vast open book of life and nature is an incomplete education. We are desensitised and numbed by mechanical habits. Rediscover the life within, dear children. Splash colours of imagination in the book and revel in it."

Reading the text, separated from the life experience it carries, is a fragmentary and disintegrated endeavour. The teacher is a bridge who connects the text to its context and a creative catalyst who awakens the students by sensitising them to their surroundings. It's more about reaching and not just teaching.