Parent as a teacher: I wish I paid more attention in school

Education has been disrupted at the most crucial time of our daughter’s life; when she is a candidate for the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education examinations. She was already in top gear, and now she and her classmates have had to slow things down.

The best thing – if there is anything like that – is that we are in the digital age, and their teachers have been sending them examination papers and homework via WhatsApp.

This means that our mobile phones are inundated with messages from the teachers of different subjects, who all want to make sure that their subjects are well covered. Add this to the fact that Pudd’ng and her classmates have a WhatsApp group, and you have a situation where my phone is mine, but it technically belongs to baby girl.

Radio days

I was telling Pudd’ng that, while in primary school back in the day, we used to have radio lessons, which we looked forward to.

It was always a treat to go and get the old wooden transistor radio in the head teacher’s office.

“What’s a transistor radio?” Pudd’ng asked, and I tried my best to explain to her that, before the advent of FM stations, radios used to be transistors.

“Was there a teacher on the other end or in the studio?” she continued asking.

“Nope. The lessons were mostly pre-recorded, and they were played at certain specific times either on the Swahili or English radio stations. Back then, we had only two radio stations.”

“What do you mean that you only had two radio stations? How did you survive?”

To baby girl and her generation, it is hard to understand how we made do with just two radio stations and one television station. They are bombarded by information from all fronts until, to them, it seems abnormal that we were “starved” of information.

Then to us, it seemed like we were living in the future. It is only when we look back that we see how far we have come.

Homeschooling by any other name

Now that Pudd’ng is learning at home, my wife and I have been forced to be teachers. If and when baby girl is stuck, she keeps shooting us questions. Well, she used to do this even before this virus confined them to virtual homeschooling, but now the questions come thick and fast.

It is only now that I wish I paid more attention in school. Because, at times, Pudd’ng asks me questions and I “sort of” recall the answer but, for the life of me, the answer gets lost before I even open my mouth.

And then I remember that it is probably because this was a subject I was least fond of in school, and I could not wait to drop it once I completed primary school.

“Please call your teacher or one of your classmates and ask them about it, because I don’t know what that is,” there are times I plead when Pudd’ng drops a question and I hit a brick wall. Heck, I have hit more brick walls than I can remember.

Thank God for technology

There are times I ask Pudd’ng to ask Uncle Google, who always comes in handy when this poor dad is stuck between a gazillion question marks and a daughter who is waiting for an answer.  

I have already started dreaming that I am a teacher. If a miracle does not happen and schools reopen, I will start talking in my sleep and, among others, ordering the class to be silent. If this happens, I know I will not hear the end of from my wife and daughter.