When the pandemic started, many things were taken away from us. One of them was school. When COVID-19 appeared, our school CMR NPS shut down shortly, and it seemed out of the ordinary because we didn’t need to write our final exams anymore. As children, we felt an incomplete closure of the 2019-2020 academic year.
During the months of lockdown, our school kept us connected with ZOOM summer sessions and gradually started live online schooling. Initially, we were skeptical about the new schooling environment. In this form though, we missed out on a few elements that we enjoyed in the physical school, like recess and lunch breaks where we could casually talk and talk with our friends, and PE which was basically where we played sports like football and kept ourselves physically fit. In zoom, however, we could only attend to subject matter, and we couldn’t nonchalantly communicate with our friends.
As a gateway towards interacting more liberally, our school brought in a very innovative idea called the Breakfast Club as an alternative to connect with my fellow classmates. This activity takes place every Saturday of the month except the 2nd Saturdays. On each Saturday between 10:00 – 10:30 am, we do fun and enjoyable activity with a freer conversation between the students and our class teacher who chairs the session. During the first session, we played an entertaining game called 2 truths 1 lie, wherein each person would tell 3 statements about themselves and the rest of the students in the class would guess which of the statements the lie was. We were all amused by this activity and attended each breakfast club with the same elation. Once, we had to collect 15 items from our house, listed by our teacher, in a span of 5 minutes. After salvaging as many items as we could, the people who collected all 15 items or the highest number, would pick up one of the items and tell a story about it. I was one of them and got to tell an interesting incident related to my three-year-old water bottle! The most recent Breakfast Club on the 18th of July was the most delightful yet. We had to list things we had never seen or done before, and each person would take chances orating what they had on their list. There were many funny and witty answers, but it lightened our moods, especially with the online reviews going on now.
I would love it if the duration of the Breakfast Club increased to one hour. My friends would agree with me because they look forward to it fervently every Saturday.
By
Adhvik K S
Grade 7
