A teacher does not have to go too far or take any special trouble to teach children about insects or creatures similar to insects. Take spiders, for instance – you are never too far away from one. You will find them in dusty little nooks and crevices assiduously making their webs.
Spiders are often confused with insects but in reality they are not insects at all. Spiders and their relatives, the scorpions, ticks and mites are arachnids. They differ from insects in several ways. Where insects have a distinct head, a thorax and an abdomen, arachnids have a cephalothorax (a fused head and thorax) and the abdomen. Insects have six legs, compound eyes and jaws that can chew up their food. Arachnids have eight legs, and simple eyes, and their jaws are designed to pierce their prey. Also, arachnids cannot fly, whereas most insects can.

This article has been adapted from an article by Indrani Roy in Teacher Plus March-April 1999.

This is an article for subscribers only. You may request the complete article by writing to us at editorial@teacherplus.org.

‘Ideas are sacred. If you get them in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.’

My little world brightened up one fine morning when I was ready to implement an idea. It all started with a feedback form. Some students of the Class of 2003 had written that they found my history classes monotonous. The thought kept rankling; I was one of the many teachers responsible for making history a boring subject for students.

I resolved to do something about it in the new academic session. Things fell in place on the first day itself. When I entered my class and saw new faces staring at me with enthusiasm, an idea came to me. Why not get it from the horse’s mouth? I asked my new students to write a small paragraph each on what they expected from a history class. When I read their write-ups I saw that my 15-year old students were brimming with ideas on how to make history classes interesting. They had listed down things like field trips, interactive lessons followed by discussions, quizzes, power point presentations, research time in the library, and debates.

Anita Choudhary teaches History at the Bluebells School, Delhi. She can be reached at anita_wanchoo@hotmail.com.

This is an article for subscribers only. You may request the complete article by writing to us at editorial@teacherplus.org.

We need to have some measure of performance and achievement. Marks and grades are intended to serve that purpose. When we test human beings, the process of testing has an impact. What a student learns and how a teacher teaches are strongly influenced by the testing methodology. Grading systems are not just a mapping of a range of marks to a grade. The first and foremost issue is that grading must not be a centralised process with a common board of examination. An example may help to understand why. Consider a subject like science which may have a lab component.

Let us say, students will earn 20 marks for homework assignments. If there are 5 of them in a term, this means 4 marks per assignment. Another 20 marks can be for the lab. Each student has to demonstrate to the teacher that the experiment is done and the results are properly written. The number of marks per experiment, however, will be very few. A mid-term exam can be worth 25 marks and the final, 35 marks. The mid-term and final have to be set by the teacher.

Statistics indicate that there will be a clustering of students within a class. The clusters determine the conversion of the total marks into grades. A teacher may examine the borderline students to decide on the dividing lines between grades.

In a subject like English or Hindi, the marks can be distributed over essays, book reports and oral presentations, in addition to the home assignments and exams. Each teacher may decide to change the proportion of marks for an activity. A common category is quizzes. Instead of giving homework, a teacher may decide to have a quiz on the lesson she planned to give as homework and grade that instead.

By the time final exams come around, both students and parents are aware of the students’ performance, therefore, the result of the final exam is not likely to be a surprise. None of the elements is a major component. Consistent performance is what matters.

Incidentally, suppose the final exam was common across schools and grading was applied to all students, imagine the pressure on teachers to give high marks for each assignment because the teacher in the other school is very liberal. No wonder, the current systems with a small portion of internal assessment are failures.

Concerns against a distributed evaluation system
How will we admit students to colleges if there is no common exam for all students in various schools? The centralised board exams are not serving this purpose. Professional colleges already have common entrance exams. Other courses are also feeling the pressure when trying to admit students from different school boards. It would seem that the board exams are no longer reasonable differentiators given the very high marks obtained by many students. I am confident that our children are not substantially smarter than us.

How can we be sure that schools are fulfilling the tasks expected of them? Here a centralised testing for some skills like mathematics, and communication may be desirable. The analysis for such testing is not to measure the student but to measure the performance of an institution. We need not have a centralised exam but can instead use indirect measures like how many go to college and how they perform in college.

Our primary goal has to be to help students learn
Now, let us consider a simple quiz on learning. How many children can tell the names of the presidents of India? Compare that to how many children can tell the names of the captains of the Indian cricket teams. Did schools ever teach the latter?

Children are obviously capable of learning, including memorising, a lot. How do we motivate them? The instrument for motivation is the teacher. Yet, in a centralised system of examination, the teacher is merely a cog. In fact, a less significant cog than the tuition classes. In the tuition class, the students learn the critical skills necessary to score very high marks.

Let us consider the implications on students and teachers if the testing measure is based on what happens in the classroom. If two teachers teach the same subject, even in the same school or college each sets his own tests. The following are modelled on my experiences or memories of my experiences:

• Teachers ensure that it is easy to pass with a ‘C’ but hard to get an ‘A’.
• Feedback on getting every answer paper back and arguing with the teacher is an essential part of learning. In my experience, teachers never hesitate to increase the marks in a test if a student convinces them that (s)he had misunderstood the intention or the teacher had misunderstood the student. The correction is immediate.
• No single test has a make or break capability. The grade is based on performance throughout the semester in various types of activities. In my experience, in English, essay writing and book reviews mattered a lot. In mathematics, problem solving mattered more. Again discussion with teachers was the norm and, by implication, a teacher could not afford to be arbitrary and wasn’t.
• There may be surprise tests. Attendance was implicitly assured, not enforced. (Except in the case of problem students.)
• Mass tuition classes would not make any sense as there is no common paper for which to prepare. One may take tuitions to help one understand.
• Teachers can play on their strengths and the needs of the students.

There are significant social implications of a non-centralised grading policy as well. Affirmative action in the US raised issues of reverse discrimination. Yet, a society cannot afford to ignore the needs of the socially disadvantaged groups. Invariably, the disadvantaged students will belong to the less well known schools or regions. A distributed grading policy allows one to pick the ‘big fish from the small ponds’. For instance, “Texas, California, and Florida have all instituted a percent-based admission policy as a replacement for affirmative action. In Texas, for example, this policy guarantees the top ten per cent of Texas’s high school graduates admission to a state school as long as they have taken a list of required courses.”1

Until recently, BITS Pilani was using a similar practice of picking the best students from various universities to fill their seats and ensuring an all India impact.

In Goa, I noticed many well-off parents moving from ‘rural’ locations to ‘urban’ areas to ensure that their children went to better schools and had a better chance of getting into professional colleges. A policy of picking the best students from each school may even reverse the migration. This will also give more importance to an assessment method that is led by teachers who observe a student over time.

It is not enough to say that a teacher is important in a society. We must give teachers the necessary importance. Grading policy at the class level is an important tool and a signal in the right direction.

The author can be reached at seth.anil@gmail.com.

http://cyproject.net/article/achieving-diversity-and-equality-a-new-approach

In village communities, armies, religious organisations, schools, families and governments, punishment exists in some form or the other. It is almost taken for granted that without punishment, without the fear of punishment, the fragile order will be in tatters. However, there is also a disturbing perception – in villages where there were no police stations, there was no crime. When law enforcing machinery came, crime rose. Thus, orderly behaviour, respect for each other for the common good seems to suffer when the hand gets rough.

What do schools have to do with discipline, apart from introducing the young to various branches of knowledge? What does a school have to do with retribution, controlled behaviour, suffering punishment? On the face of it – nothing. Below the surface – everything.

When a group of students are brought together under one roof, in one campus, often small, there is bound to be movement. Small children learn early the art of walking and gain access to speech. And through these simple rights seek belonging in the drama of life. Through curiosity and energetic exploration they stumble and fumble and discover many things – colour, texture, movement, play, pain and pleasure. They also quickly learn power, domination, stubbornness, fear and aggression. And from a young age, the journey becomes an interplay of the desirable and the undesirable.

Teachers and adults watch this engaging ancient drama with joy and horror and have to create a safe atmosphere for students, one with enough order to go on. How does one relate to a very dear person who lies? Or one who is drawn to another’s shiny toys? Or who laughs when another falls and is injured? Or one who disrupts the proceedings?

Usually we begin with the given – ‘This has to stop! How shall we do it?’ And it happens by speaking to the student, many times. We believe that telling someone something will have an effect, break a pattern, and things will change. This hope is naive, as much of human experience says that it does not work. People do not change easily, particularly behaviour. On the contrary, punishment, or fear seems to work. If one raises the stick, the horse or goat or cow will do what it is told to do. If fear is made to rise in human beings they may behave. ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child.’

Is the purpose of school or contact with adult to raise fear and learn behaviour under its cloud? How will responsible adults move further?

If a large number of people assemble anywhere, poor behaviour comes to light – in a class, in a stadium and in a rally. For the purpose of learning, do people need to gather together? Further, when a number of people of the same age get together, there is pressure to behave similarly. The need for proving oneself better than others manifests, competition sets in.

From time immemorial one man has suffered at the hands of another, and children have suffered a great deal. Our reactions of anger, outrage and violence are coded in our minds and possibly even the genes. We know that violence begets more violence. But few of us turn our faces away comprehensively from it.

If a school says we will not punish students, it seems a good beginning. But much more has to be learnt and understood. Each teacher must learn how to create, design situations where innate order can prevail. The community of teachers must learn practices and approaches that permit collaboration among students and not competition. Schools must explore structures that do not require a heavy hand for ordering.

At a deeper level schools must internalise their functions as seeding respect, dignity and inquiry in human society, not merely providing gateways to a piece of the luxury pie.

The writer is Principal of The School, Krishnamurti Foundation India, Chennai. He can be reached at gautama2004@gmail.com.

One has to fight the suffocating smoke from the lorry traffic and the pungent smell from the industries’ chimneys to reach Vikasana. But miraculously, as one gets nearer to the centre, the pollution gives way to fresh air. The sound of the lorries fades, the smoke from the chimneys recedes and all that is visible is a dense cluster of trees. In spite of being in the midst of a rapidly growing industrial area in Bangalore, Vikasana has managed to maintain its tranquillity.

Living up to its name Vikasana, which means blossoming, is a centre that strives to create an ideal environment for the growth of the child’s mind. MC Malati started Vikasana as a place where education is enjoyable, and a child is allowed to learn at his or her own pace with no comparison or competition. The larger idea is also to provide children who don’t have the means access to education. After being trained by noted educationist David Horsburgh, Malati set up Vikasana 29 years ago. “It is because of him that I had the courage to start this school,” she says. True to David Horsburgh’s philosophy this centre is peace personified.

What is Vikasana?
Vikasana is a rural centre of education that provides free education to children of all ages from the surrounding villages. It is a learning space that the village children can come to for as long as they desire. Children learn by doing and through participation in activities. There is a great emphasis on care of the environment, nurturing one’s space and interests, working with one’s hands and self-directed learning. “The child’s learning is facilitated and then allowed to proceed at its own pace without fear. There is total freedom to take time, to explore, decipher and learn. Many spaces are created for both adults and children to learn,” says Malati.

Before circumstance forced Vikasana to accept a minimal amount as fees, it had followed a no-fee policy. “For the past two years we have been taking Rs. 200 due to some water problem. Sometimes, well-to-do parents also send their children to our school; they help us in kind or sometimes by giving us money,” says Malati. Help also comes from organisations like the Neel Bagh Trust and the Association for Promoting Social Action (APSA), Bangalore.

Activities at the centre
The activities at the centre range from gardening to constructing buildings! Life at the centre starts at 8:45 am with children watering the plants or cleaning the classrooms. After this, children from all age groups get together for a session of singing or story telling. The children are taught songs in different languages such as Kannada, English, Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Bengali, French, German and Italian. At about 10 a.m. the children begin their academic work.

It is fascinating to watch the teachers work with their students. Each teacher has about ten students from different age groups working with her. The child picks what s/he wants to study that day and the teacher facilitates this learning process. The teacher makes sure she spends time with each child individually. In this manner, apart from gaining individual attention from the teacher, the child’s decision-making ability is nurtured. “We have 30 children from different backgrounds. We are two teachers and have no strict rules; we work on holidays, children and parents too are excited about this,” says Malati.

Children are also taught to learn how things work: if they do not know about something the teachers and students work together towards finding the answers. “The teachers work hard with the children so that they do not say ‘I don’t know’,” says Malati. “The child has to learn to value everything. Even a broomstick – the child has to learn to utilise it in more than one way,” she adds.

As the day comes to an end, children spend their time making things using their hands. Pottery, sewing, clay modelling, sometimes even building small structures with bricks and cement! A small play home on the campus was built by students. The idea behind this centre is to emphasise self-learning, and the environment created in Vikasana is appropriate for this.

One problem that the teachers as well as the children face is that parents do not take as much interest in their child’s education as they perhaps should. “They believe everything has to happen at the school. But most well-off parents’ demands are always higher. We keep insisting that they come and spend some time with their children and see how they are working. Sometimes some mothers come, but the men are always busy,” says Malati.

Examination at Vikasana
Although the school is not structured towards preparing the children to take certifying examinations, Vikasana provides ample encouragement to students who are interested in taking government level exams at the 7th standard and SSLC. Other help by way of coaching or enrolling them as private candidates in a government school is also given. Children who do not wish to sit for such exams are encouraged to develop their other talents locally or at other voluntary organisations in Bangalore such as the Aurobindo Ashram or Mrichakatika.

The one question that everyone asks of an alternative school is: Are children able to cope with the outside world when they get out of school? “They do,” comes a prompt reply! “There are children who have become business men, some of them have come back to school to teach and others are teaching in other schools. There is one chartered accountant, some software engineers, a nurse.”

Issues in education have been discussed and debated for a long time; but only some dare to take these discussions seriously and provide space for alternative education. Vikasana is one such school. Vikasana has been engaged in providing an alternative educational space for more than 29 years. It can and has be used as an example to show that alternative forms of education also have a place in our world where mainstream, syllabus-bound schooling holds the monopoly.

Meghana Rao can be reached at raomegh@gmail.com.

Believe it or not, but goats were responsible for coffee’s tryst with mankind! Tales of yore say that an Ethiopian shepherd, Kaldi, noticed that his goats acted frisky every time they ate some red berries. The shepherd picked some berries for himself and so coffee began its journey with man. However, coffee was originally a food, at least in East Africa. People mixed coffee cherries (as hulled coffee berries are known) with animal fat to make an instant energy food. It was in the Arabian peninsula, where coffee also grew, that it was first developed into a hot drink. Coffee became extremely popular in the Islamic world as an alternative to the prohibited wine.

Flourishing trade between Italy and the Muslims of Africa and Egypt brought coffee to Italy from where it was introduced to Europe and Asia. Considered a Muslim drink, coffee became more widely accepted by the Europeans after Pope Clement VIII declared it a Christian drink in 1600.

Coffee became popular in North America during the American war of independence when tea from Britain was in short supply. Today, America is the largest market for coffee.

Coffee bean to coffee powder
While there are different varieties of coffee in the world, the two more popular ones are Coffea arabica and Coffea robusta. Coffea arabica, indigenous to Ethiopia and Yemen is said to be richer in flavour than Coffea robusta, which is widely grown in Africa and Brazil. More bitter than the arabica variety, Coffea robusta is easier to care for and hence cheaper. Each, of course, has many sub-species all unique in themselves. So how does Coffea arabica or robusta turn into the coffee powder you buy from your grocery store?

Coffee berries from the coffee plant are first skinned to reveal the coffee beans, which are fermented, washed and dried. The green coffee beans, as they are called, are then roasted to bring out the actual flavour of the coffee. Both the strength and flavour of the coffee depend on how long the beans are roasted. Beans that are only slightly roasted have a stronger flavour and are bitter as they have higher caffeine content. Roasting the beans longer makes the beans more sugary and less fibrous. The roasted beans are then ground, either coarsely or smoothly and then packaged to be sold.

The most expensive coffee in the world
The most expensive coffee in the world is processed on the islands of Indonesia and is called Kopi Luwak locally and Civet coffee elsewhere. Civet coffee is made from coffee berries defecated by the Asian Palm Civet, a mammal native to South-east Asia and Southern China. Raw coffee berries form a natural part of the civet’s diet. The beans in the berries, however, remain undigested and are excreted. It is believed that the enzymes in the civet’s stomach enhance the flavour of the coffee by breaking down the proteins that make coffee bitter. The excreted beans are then washed and only slightly roasted so as not to destroy the complex flavour of the beans. Sold at a premium price of $600 a pound, Civet coffee is available mainly in Japan and the United States. Limited quantities reach other parts of the world as well.

Know your favourite coffee better
Espresso: The espresso was developed in Italy in 1940. It is produced by forcing very hot water through coffee at a high pressure. Specially designed espresso machines that can control the temperature of the water and the pressure are used for making espressos. A good espresso is syrupy and has creama or reddish-brown foam on the top. An espresso must be served immediately after it is brewed. A delay of more than two minutes between serving an espresso and consuming it will cause the beverage to degrade due to oxidation and cooling.

Cappuccino: Another coffee variant from Italy, cappuccino was invented in 1900. A cappuccino is made from espresso, milk and milk foam, and is generally served in porcelain cups as their heat retention capacity is much higher than either glass or paper. The milk foam in the beverage acts as an insulator trapping heat in and allowing the coffee to stay hot longer.

Café mocha: Café mocha is made using one-third espresso and two-thirds steamed milk with a portion of chocolate generally in the form of syrup. Whipped cream, dustings of cocoa or cinnamon powder and marshmallows are added to both enhance the flavour of the coffee and to decorate it.

Frappe coffee: The national coffee of Greece, frappe is a frothy cold coffee drink made by mixing spray-dried (a system that uses hot gas to dry materials) instant coffee with water. The frappe was discovered quite by accident in 1957 at the International Trade Fair in Greece. A representative of the Nestle company was looking for hot water to drink his regular instant coffee during a break. Finding no hot water, he mixed the instant coffee in cold water in a shaker and the first frappe was born. Frappe is extremely popular in hot weathers.

Coffee in India
Like the Kaldi legend, India too has quite an interesting story to tell of how coffee reached this country. Arabia, where coffee was widely grown, had monopolised coffee trade. The Muslims did not allow any other country to grow their own coffee by ensuring that the coffee beans they exported were sterile or infertile. This they did by boiling the beans. However, in the 1600s, there came a pilgrim to Mecca. His name was Baba Budan. Having tasted coffee, Baba Budan wanted to take it back to India with him. But with the Arabs being so careful about their coffee, Baba Budan had to engineer a great escape from Mecca with fertile coffee seeds strapped to his belly. It is believed that Baba Budan planted these seeds in the hills of Chikmagalur, in Karnataka.

Coffee in India is mainly grown in the three southern states of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. India produces both wet-processed and dry-processed coffees and has its share of specialty coffees and estate brands. India accounts for 4% of the global coffee production, 72% of which is exported. Although Indian coffees like Anokhi, Mallali Estate and India Monsooned Malabar are popular with coffee consuming countries, they are largely drunk mixed with other coffee variants and never by themselves. In India itself, coffee consumption is restricted to the south Indian states and is rarely an alternative to tea in the North. However, with the café culture, coffee seems to be becoming popular everywhere in India.

We all read magazines. In fact, you are reading one right now. Teacher Plus is a magazine that comes out every month. Dictionaries define a magazine as a publication issued regularly which contains articles, stories, photographs and advertisements. But the definition doesn’t end there; the word has other meanings as well. A magazine is also defined as a part of a gun which contains the bullets; it is also a place where ammunition is stored. How did one word acquire such radically different meanings? Are these really different words which have more or less the same pronunciation? It’s not the case; all the different meanings have evolved from one word. The word magazine is not English at all; it comes from the Arabic ‘makhzan’ meaning ‘storehouse’. The original magazine, therefore, was a place where grains and other supplies were stored. This perhaps explains why the part of the gun which contains the bullets is called a magazine – it is a storehouse for the ammunition. Since books are a ‘storehouse of knowledge’, all books were referred to as ‘magazines’. It was only in the 19th century that the word began to be used exclusively with periodicals.

For a magazine to be a storehouse of knowledge, it needs to be filled with the right material. The person who normally performs this task is the reporter. Do you know that this individual who wields the mighty pen is related to the more humble porter? What is the connection between the two? The word ‘porter’ is from the Latin ‘porto’ meaning ‘carry’; and this is what the men in red do, they carry things from one place to another. The Latin prefix ‘re’ means ‘back’; so, the job of the ‘reporter’ is to actually ‘carry back’ something. What is it that he carries back with him? It’s the news!

There are different types of reporters. Some work for a particular newspaper or magazine, while some choose to be independent. These individuals contribute articles to different organisations; often, they are commissioned to write them. We call such people ‘free lancers’. Nowadays, when we hear the expression ‘free lancer’, we immediately think of a writer. The original free lancers, however, were no writers; they were in fact mercenaries. It is quite possible that most of them didn’t know how to read or write! A ‘lance’ as you probably know is a long spear, and a ‘lancer’ is someone who wields this weapon. In the old days, every army had lancers. When you referred to someone as a ‘free lancer’, what you meant was that the individual was free of any loyalty. He was willing to fight for anyone who paid him a handsome amount. He didn’t fight for free!

Whether a reporter is working as a free lancer or as a full time employee in a particular organisation, something that both individuals have to do is to meet deadlines. When an individual works for the media, the threat of the ‘deadline’, like the sword of Damocles, constantly hangs over his head. In order to make sure that he doesn’t incur the Editor’s wrath, the writer moves heaven and earth to submit his article on time. If he fails to do so, his boss may read him the riot act, or confine the piece he has written to the dustbin. Dictionaries define a ‘deadline’ as ‘a date or time by which you have to do or complete something.’ Based on this definition, a deadline is unlikely to put the fear of God in anyone; it isn’t what you might call life threatening. But the original deadline was exactly that. It was something that could get you killed. The word was first used during the American Civil War. In prison compounds in the south, a line was drawn within the compound. Prisoners were told not to cross this particular line; if they did, they were immediately shot dead! So the original deadline was what the word suggested. If you crossed it, you were simply shot dead. No compromises! Maybe it’s time we got our politicians and government officials to take deadlines more seriously – anything we can do about that?

S Upendran teaches at the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad. He can be reached at supendran@gmail.com.

On a recent web browsing trip, I made a casual visit to a ‘parenting’ website and came across distressed parents concerned about their teenaged children. The more common concerns were,
“My 16 year-old has panic attacks.”
“My 15 year old daughter has low self-esteem.”

My immediate thought was, ‘Weren’t these adult ailments some years ago?’

What are the causes for this disturbing picture? The answer is not as complex as one would imagine. It is right there in front of you if you care to look. The challenges that children face today force them to grow up sooner than they should. The most prominent being exposure to unbridled information, and peer pressure.

Unlike with earlier generations, when information was ‘regulated’ and ‘filtered’ through identified and ‘restrictive’ sources, usually parents, teachers and elder siblings, today’s children have access to a global media – television and Internet topping the list.

As a result, teachers and parents only play the roles of ‘interpreters’ and ‘translators’. They are no longer the ‘people who could do no wrong.’ Armed with a variety of information children confront parents/teachers about issues which, until a few years ago, were taboo.

Readiness to do anything to keep pace with peers is the other worrisome trend among young people. The one adage that children subscribe to these days is ‘THE WINNER TAKES IT ALL!”

As if high academic performance was not a stringent enough scale on which to access the success of a child, many other ‘performance measurement tools’ are involuntarily thrust upon the hapless adolescent. Appealing physical appearance, premium brand preferences, aptitude for sports, ability to excel in song, dance or any other of the performing arts are some of the things that the modern-day young man or woman should have. The 21^st century youth better be the ‘Queen’ or ‘King’ of all trades.

Today’s youngsters believe that they can lead their lives in their own way and that they don’t need adult supervision.

Gone are the days of regulation and control. It is time to replace ‘counsel’ with ‘feedback’. Youngsters want their views to be ‘endorsed’ or ‘considered’, and not necessarily ‘corrected’. Advice has to be diluted to ‘suggestions’. Parents and teachers need to be mentors and coaches, and most of all friends. It’s ‘Bye, bye, innocence. Make way for ‘attitude’.

It is time for a modern-day Eric Berne to redraft the Freudian psychoanalytical theory of Transactional Analysis. There is a fourth ego-state at play, beyond Berne’s identified states of Child, Adult and Parent.

Welcome and include the Teen-Adult!

Nalini Suryanarayan teaches at Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan Vidyalaya, Malad, Mumbai. She can be reached at dsrv_m@bcgschools.org.

Those days, we did not have Google to help strip plagiarists of their pretensions. Today, wannabe writers need to be far more skilful in their borrowings.

Sarika J Antony, Hyderabad.

More of pupils’ views
The December issue of Teacher Plus was a bit of a pleasant surprise in that one did not expect a short story special in a magazine dedicated to education. It certainly had a soothing effect though. The short story titled ‘Choices’ was by far the best, in language, style and for the shock element. The article on ‘Solving word problems’ reminded me of my school days and how I struggled to learn Arithmetic. It was an eye-opener and I hope teachers who read it will make note of it in their classroom teaching.

All in all, a readable issue, but I do wish we could have some articles on what children think of modern-day teaching, their own understanding of the enormous learning material at their disposal. It will at least start a debate among teachers and perhaps force them to think more about their wards and what they are learning.

Ashima Trikha, New Delhi.

How does one begin to set the ball rolling for such an enterprise? Who can the teacher turn to? How does the teacher include students in this activity? Perhaps an alphabetical list would be helpful in starting the planning process and keeping track of what needs to be done.

The first thing that should be kept in mind is the Age group of the students for whom the magazine is planned. A class magazine is a reflection of the class, and students need to be old enough to take an active part in its preparation. Starting in class 5 or 6 is probably advisable as the students are young enough to take direction and old enough to be productive and more importantly, the right age to be enthusiastic and full of ideas!

Next, the general plan of the magazine, the number and the type of Articles and the Art work to be included needs to be thought about. For this the teacher can turn to the students, who will provide the raw material – stories, poems and drawings on topics initiated by the teacher or collectively, by the students.

Along with the articles, there can be a list of Achievers for the quarter. Here, high marks and discipline need not be the criteria. For example, “The class is proud of Rohit. When his parents had to rush out of town to visit his ailing grandfather, he took up the challenge of getting his younger sister and himself to school on time.” Or, “Congratulations, Sunita. Your stint at the blind school was appreciated by all to whom you read from your favourite book.”

Bonding between students may be fostered with the formation of a core group to be the editorial Board. Students would love to have the formal designation of Layout Artist or Copy Editor and the teacher can outline the duties of each one on the board in order that there is no bickering amongst them-selves. Such roles can rotate among the students so that every one gets a turn shouldering different responsibilities.

A Book Review section may be put into each issue of the magazine, not only to encourage the reading habit, but also to get students to mull over what they have read and learn to appreciate literature.

A thought may be given to the Binding of the magazine. Since there is no need for the magazine to be printed in a formal manner, a ribbon or a spiral binding may be effective for the couple of copies that need to be made (one original, and a few copies to be circulated amongst the students and kept in the school library).

Classroom activity should be the source of articles for the magazine. For this, one period in a month may be reserved for story writing, poetry writing, drawing, according to the children’s preferences. By encouraging them to indulge in the activity that interests them, there is no compulsion for students to push themselves into activities that do not interest them greatly.

Discourage Downloads from the Internet. Students are adept at this, but the magazine could lose its personal and original flavour with the addition of widely circulated jokes, facts and tidbits available on the Web.

Encourage the artistic students in class to illustrate some of the stories and poems that are to appear in the magazine. Also get the students think about an Editorial that expresses their view on a particular issue.

Foster a sense of responsibility among the students. Have Faith in the editorial board (of which the teacher is also a part) to meet the deadlines for the magazine. Give them the Freedom to decide what should go into their magazine within the guidelines set by you.

Guidelines may be left entirely to the teacher. Put in a few Guessing Games for student readers to sharpen their wits. Remember that the magazine is not only a reflection of student work, but also a source of enjoyment for readers.

Perhaps there could be a How-to-make or How-to-do page in which students could learn to make a puppet or a kaleidoscope or even an easy recipe for a sweet or savory dish that does not involve using the stove.

Illustrations are always a source of interest and some students are more than capable of expressing themselves through this medium. (Covered under artwork and drawing.) Remember to put in an Index to make reading easy.

A couple of Jokes would be the usual recourse to fill pages and to get students to contribute, but there is the temptation to copy jokes from sources already available to everyone, thereby making the magazine lose its originality. Perhaps a funny incident that occurred in class during the quarter could be written about instead. This would serve not only to entertain but also to chronicle the event.

Kudos column could be included. Again, this need not and should not be limited to academic excellence or sports achievements. Rather, it could go something like this: “Kudos to Rohit and Gagan who joined hands for the special assembly although they had a fight a few days earlier, witnessed by their classmates, and swore never to be friends again!”

Limit the contents of the magazine to subjects of interest to the students. Make Lists and encourage the core group to do the same so that they learn to be well-organised.

Remember to have regular short Meetings to keep track of progress and collect contributions (apart from those done in the classroom).

Keep track of the Numbers – the number of pages proposed for the magazine (10 to 16 should do fine for a start) and the number of students who make a contribution of some sort in the year.

Cover the annual Outing. Ask a couple of students to pen their accounts of the class picnic.

Decide on the number of Pages the magazine should have. Encourage a Poetry page. Perhaps put in a Personal column about the activities of the children. Photographs of the students (maybe those who have their birthday in the quarter) may be put in. With the ease of scanning and printing, a couple of copies should not be difficult to generate. Add a couple of Puzzles developed by the teacher or the children (e.g., word search, simple crossword, etc.).

A Quarterly magazine may work well as it gives adequate time for activities to take place that may be covered and also gives adequate reading material for those who look forward to it as a source of entertainment.

The magazine is a Record of what takes place in the classroom. In later years, it will be a Reminder to you of past classes, a time to Reminiscence for past students, and a Rating scale for new students.

Stories will form the bulk of the magazine. The teacher could plant the Seeds of stories and let the children do the rest.

Establish a Theme for the magazine. For example, if the theme is Kindness to Animals, or Concern for the Elderly, or Superheroes, the contents of the issue should deal largely with this. Encourage cross communication between students and the teacher to get Tips from them as to what they would like to see in their magazine. This could help the teacher and the editorial board decide on the theme for each quarter.

Keep the magazine User-friendly – simple to produce and simple to read. Take the help of enthusiastic Volunteers whom you will find in every class.

Put in Word games and Writing tips. This can help improve vocabulary and language. Here, even the roots of words or the history of the changes in a word may be brought in to generate interest in the use of language.

Xerox a couple of copies for circulation in class and to keep in the school library.

At the end of the Year, a copy of the class photo may be included in the magazine.

Zoogenics – encourage students to write about their pets or put in their photographs.

All this seems daunting but approached in the right spirit and with active participation from the students, a class magazine can be a joy to prepare!

The author, a prolific writer of children’s fiction, is based in Hyderabad, a nd can be reached at cherbrag@yahoo.com.