Dreamy open-air school in Bali was 'built for a pandemic'
About this time last year on a typical Melbourne lockdown morning with nothing scheduled for the day except home-schooling, kitchen bench-wiping and quiet time spent with my basil plant, I found myself telling my partner Phil, rather emphatically, that we had to make 2020 mean something. (I may have had a tear running down my cheek at the time).
Writer Penny Watson with her family at the Green School orientation.
He hardly had time to ask “how” because already I was spewing forth unbridled enthusiasm about my plan for 2021. In short, it involved moving the family holus bolus to Bali and enrolling the children at Green School, the famed school near Ubud with a huge jungle campus and reputation for turning the younger generation into environmental changemakers.
“They can climb coconut trees, mud-wrestle in rice paddies, learn how to grow organic food,” I said enthusiastically. “And when they’re not outside they’ll be in wall-less classrooms built from bamboo, with fresh air, and the soundtrack of crickets and burbling creeks and birdsong”. (At this point, I may have been twirling in the kitchen like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music).
Phil just looked at me, pointed toward his office (our guest bedroom) and said, “I’ve got a call”. But then, to his eternal credit, and with cinematic timing, as he walked off he said: “But it sounds good, let’s do it”. And thus our plan was hatched.
At the time, of course, I thought 2021 would be the great anecdote to 2020, a year of catching-up on travel and freedom well-earned after being cooped up at home in inner-city Melbourne for six months. Back then, I thought lockdowns would be a thing of the past and that home-schooling would be shelved in the history section of life’s library of experience.
Evidently, I was wrong about lockdowns. When we left Melbourne two months ago the city was just settling into this current string of lockdown extensions. Two days after arriving in Indonesia, while ensconced in quarantine in Jakarta, the country was plunged into its toughest lockdown yet (and it continues still).
Writer Penny Watson, Etienne Watson-King (7) and Digby Watson-King (11) – all smiles at Green School Bali.
But, uncannily (and so far, so good), I was right about home schooling. Thanks to the size of Green School’s nature-immersive campus, the open-air classrooms, and the Covid-safe taskforce on the ground, this is one of the few schools in Indonesia now open for on-site learning. As one of the head educators assured parents on orientation day (if a little uncomfortably): “this is a school made for a pandemic”.
So last Monday, the kids – Digby (grade 6) and Etienne (grade 2) started their first day at Green School on the big vine-tangled jungle campus that I had dreamed about.
Digby’s school building, known as the Heart of the School, is a lofty three-level bamboo edifice, with open-air classrooms that overlook coconut trees, a veggie patch and the pitched Bali-style bamboo rooftops of the school village. There are shoe-racks for going barefoot and school lunches made from produce grown on-site and served on banana leaves. At 2pm everyday a gong sounds out across the school so students can stop what they’re doing for two minutes and contemplate nature.
Green School Bali's Heart of the School building is made entirely of bamboo.
Eti’s classroom is similarly open-air with handcrafted bamboo furniture and a mezzanine level with climbing ropes. Lunchtime is all about sliding down the fireman’s pole, visiting the resident bunny rabbits or hanging in the bamboo forest. During his first week, Eti built boats out of banana palm leaves, learned to count to ten in Indonesian and made ceremonial offerings for Saraswati Day, an important local feast day. He takes a change of clothes to school for mud-play and brings them home dirty. Every. Single. Day.
It is the first time in 20 months that the campus has been fully opened and the privilege is not taken lightly. Temperature checks, hand sanitizing, social distancing and student masks are all part of the deal. Long may it last.