Back to school was never this bad..

The first day of school on Saturday was a bit of a disappointment. After the MAO experience, I was expecting that plenty of kids would be standing in and around my school, eager for school to begin but not a single kid was there. We had arrived even before the principal and had to wait for her to come in and open the locks.
We sat in the principal's room which is also the staffroom as more teachers showed up. Around 4-5 kids of various classes showed up too and they were told to sit in one of the classrooms. The time in the staffroom was spent by the teachers chatting about the problems in their lives, the problems in their relatives' lives, their salaries (we found out the principal earns the same as us!). When we inquired, they told us about the school, the community, etc. We realized there were severe mindset issues here.

When we got tired of all the talk, we went to the classroom to speak to the kids that had shown up. To our dismay, the rooms were still dusty. There was broken glass lying around on the ground and a couple of broken benches in the back. The fans and lights that had been taken down to prevent them from being stolen had still not been put up. We hadn't brought in any charts for the first day since we weren't sure how many students would show up. Also we wanted to make sure that the charts we put up wouldn't get stolen or ripped apart. I think this might be an issue at our school. 

We went through the children's notebooks, asked them about their school, etc. One of the older students opened up to us and told us about some issues he had been facing. He has the drive and the motivation to study but somehow just isn’t able to. He tells us his younger sister had recently passed away. She had fallen into a gutter. He tells us he still hears her screams and as a result he cries a lot. He finds solace in the company of children and confides in us that he has never made a friend in his entire life. He tells us he feels lighter talking to us and that he usually doesn’t open up to people like this but for some reason today he did. He had been planning on leaving the school soon since he was disappointed with the way things went but we tried to convince him to stay.

We had brought books and paper and color pencils to keep them busy and that is how they spent the rest of their time. The only male teacher* in the school was seated in that same classroom with his head bowed, an open book in his lap and fingers wrapped around a pen. When I looked at him I noticed that he was sleeping in the chair. No wonder the state of education is so bad.

While we were in the classroom, the teachers in the staffroom had collected money and had sent out one of the kids to get samosas for all of us. We ate from that but I later realized we shouldn't have. We should've discouraged the practice of using kids for such purposes from the first day. At 11.30 the electricity went out. We waited in the staffroom for a while and then the principal dismissed us 15 minutes early.

Hopefully, Monday will be better with more kids turning up.

* I later found out that this teacher was actually one of the better teachers in our school. I really should stop being judgmental.