Delhi: Happiness Classes, now a phone call away

At around 2pm Sunday, Rajni Kumar — mother to a class 7 student of a Delhi government school in Nand Nagri — received a text message from the state education department

At around 2pm Sunday, Rajni Kumar — mother to a class 7 student of a Delhi government school in Nand Nagri — received a text message from the state education department asking her to dial a number to learn about the “mindfulness” activity done during the Happiness Class at her son’s school.

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The moment she called the number, an automated message played at the other end: “Sit in a comfortable position and close your eyes. Take a deep breath and focus on your breathing. Pay attention to the inhaling and exhaling process. Open your eyes after three minutes of doing so. Ask your children about the changes they feel in their body during breathing,” the instructions played out in the 55-second recorded message.

“This is the first time my son and I meditated together,” said Kumar, whose son, 11-year-old Aditya Kumar, studies in the Rajkiya Pratibha Vikas Vidyalaya (RPVV) in Nand Nagri. “With the possibility of the lockdown being extended, sending our children daily activities will ensure they have something to do with us and help them follow a daily routine.”

The move comes a day after the Delhi government announced that beginning Sunday (April 12), it would send pre-recorded messages to parents of students in Delhi government schools up to class 8, to ensure they keep learning even during the lockdown.

Through text messages and interactive voice response (IVR) calls, the education department said it will guide parents on how to “become teachers” and carry out step-by-step activities to conduct Happiness Classes and Mission Buniyaad at home.

While Happiness Classes focus on helping build a student’s emotional quotient and honing their ability to deal with stress, the Mission Buniyaad initiative aims to improve learning levels of students studying in Classes 3 to 9 in government schools .

The government said they planned to target over 800,000 children through the initiative.

“When we do mindfulness in school, our classmates know about it, mostly. At home, I had to explain it to my family a little. All of us participated in the activity this morning and it made us feel peaceful,” said Aditi Negi, a class 7 student in RPVV Shalimar Bagh.

Aditi’s mother Urmila Negi, who joined the mindfulness session on Sunday, said she believed the initiative would help many. “If families engage in an activity together, it is bound to reduce any prevailing tensions. While Covid-19 has become a source of stress in the country and we all remain home, our daughter is teaching us something new. She talks about doing mindfulness regularly and we too feel good about it.”

The children were also asked to share their experiences of the event on class WhatsApp groups. “While we all talk about our thoughts and feelings during mindfulness sessions in class, not all students shared their experiences on the WhatsApp group today,” said Isha Poddar, a class 8 student at Sarvodaya Vidyalaya in Sector 8 Rohini.

“During the exercise, I was thinking about online classes and the tasty food my mother made,” she said, stifling a laugh.

Pankaj Kumar, the Happiness Coordinator at RPVV Shalimar Bagh, said teachers had received guidelines on Saturday night to prepare various activities that could be recorded and distributed among children. “We have also thought of describing various activities on paper, so that parents don’t have to forward or rewind the audio while carrying the task out,” he said.

A senior Delhi government official said teachers and principals were being roped in to ensure the activities reach as many children as possible. “The activities have been designed in such a way that they can be carried out using minimum resources and skills for all classes. Activities range from writing stories to number games for children.”