‘I love what I do as a teacher’

Pooja Vijay

Jagrithi Prabhu Kiran retired as a Professor of Post Graduate Studies in the Department of English and Communicative English at Jyothi Nivas College. She now works at Inventure Academy as The Head of Academics.

“The greatest joy that a teacher can have is to enable his student to challenge him as soon as possible”.

Hardly any of us realise that our teachers have lives outside of the classroom. We tend to think that they were put on this earth for the sole purpose of teaching us Shakespeare and algebra. During our younger years especially, our relationship with our teachers is quite impersonal.

Recently, I bumped into one of my old school teachers, Jagrithi ma’am and while we were exchanging pleasantries, she got a phone call. I was surprised when she referred to me as a friend rather than a student to her caller. That made me wonder, just how many teachers would refer to me as their friend. When do they cease to be just our teachers who teach us math or English, and become our friends?

A few days later I was asked to do an interview with one of my teachers and I immediately thought of Jagrithi ma’am and called her to ask if she was free. Very soon, I was seated in her living room, and chatting with her over some green tea.

I asked her the standard set of the questions, and got some pretty interesting answers.

Why did you decide to become a teacher?
Oh, it was quite by accident. It wasn’t my first choice of profession. I wanted to be an IAS officer. I feel that teachers in India are over-worked and under-paid. We are often emotionally drained. We require a lot of energy. It is difficult being positive all the time and fighting a system which tends to focus on negativity. We often punish, but rarely reward the student.

So how do you cope with being a teacher? What would you say are your strengths?
I think my open-mindedness and my flexibility allow me to deal with my profession. I try to cater to my learners’ needs. My strength would be that I am a reflective teacher.

And your weaknesses?
Unfortunately, I am quite impatient with my colleagues.

There is always talk about the shortcomings in the Indian Education System. What are your views on this?
I would agree that our current education system has many drawbacks. We need to make education more relevant. We need to start teaching things which are required in today’s technology-driven world. We also need to accept that our students might be smarter than us at times.

What advice would you give those people who aspire to be teachers?
I want to emphasise the importance of subject competence. You must know your subject well. Students can easily make out when they are being conned. Secondly, they should genuinely be interested in what they are doing, because teaching definitely requires something extra. A good sense of humour is definitely a must. They should also be able to speak the learners’ language.

Which age-group did you think was the hardest to teach?
It was definitely, the smaller children. I’m simply terrified of them.

Do you think that teachers play a role in their students’ lives?
Yes, I think that they do play a huge role. I know this sounds clichéd, but teachers are role models. I would advise everyone to “teach what you are”. It is also important to set a clear boundary inside the classroom, no matter how much you like a child. Outside the classroom things can be more relaxed.

How was your first day as a teacher?
My first day at Jyothi Nivas, was actually quite nice. I wasn’t nervous at all. I even got to play a basketball match!

Do you have any special memories from your teaching?
I’ve had a lot of good memories, but one particularly amusing one was when one of my students used photoshop to put a teacher’s face over the body of Jennifer Lopez. She was terribly upset, but I managed to see the lighter side of it.

Has teaching changed you somehow?
Yes. It’s changed me a lot. It’s given me self-worth. I was very cynical before, but that’s changed now. It’s also a great release.

I’ve overcome my insecurities and am now aware of my strengths. I would say that teaching has given me more than what I have given to this profession. I just love myself for what I do as a teacher.

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Mrs. Anne Fernandes taught us English at school. And she taught much else. While our skills in English certainly improved, we were learning about many other things from the values she espoused in her interactions with us – kindness, humility and integrity. In addition to the lessons that she taught with great interest, she read out to us from newspaper articles and generously recounted incidents from her personal life. She saw her role as encouraging and inspiring us, helping us become better human beings. In short, we were in good hands.

It feels nice to meet Miss Anne, and get her to share some glimpses of her ‘teaching journey’. She is as welcoming as ever. “The maternal instinct in me was very strong. I knew that I’d be a successful teacher. I could love any child. With my love for reading, I was confident that I would be able to make lessons interesting, understand the children and move with the times,” she says.

She retired from St. Anne’s High School (Malad, Mumbai) two years ago, but there continues to be a regular stream of ex-students who drop by to see her and ask for her advice.

Teaching is something she had wanted to do even as a child. And having grown up, her decision to become a teacher was quite happily accepted by the family. Though she wanted to teach younger kids, Montessori training was expensive. So she enrolled for a B.Ed. at Tilak College of Education in Pune in 1970. “The Government used to give us a stipend of Rs. 75 per month. In those days, that was a lot of money. I was able to help with the household expenses. Everyone was happy at home. Teaching was considered to be a noble profession. The society literally venerated teachers. All ‘good’ girls from ‘good’ families became teachers.”

She feels that the B.Ed. training helped her immensely. Most of her lecturers were hardworking and dedicated. It is from them that Miss Anne drew her models of ‘good teaching’. Whatever the training did not prepare her for, she learnt on the job. The first school she taught at was St. Vincent’s in Pune. Many of the students came from elite backgrounds, and she had some difficult times. “I remember one boy had a very bad handwriting. His mother asked me – as a teacher, can’t you improve his handwriting? I told her – you have one son, I have sixty. Perhaps you could help him improve his handwriting at home. It didn’t go down well with her,” she says.

After getting married, Miss Anne shifted to Mumbai. Adjusting to a newer, noisier city came as a big challenge. But her colleagues at St. Stanislaus School in Bandra, Mumbai helped her settle down. “Some of my happiest years were spent in that school. Those teachers took me under their wings and made the transition pleasant.” However, as far as her students are concerned, she feels that teaching at St. Anne’s High School was the best. “For those 21 years, the rapport between me and my students was like mother and son. At the other two schools, the teacher-student relationship was not so friendly. At times, it got quite impersonal.”

It has been a total of 36 years of teaching. I am curious to know how she looks back at the experience and about the lessons she has learnt. She says, “It has made me a better human being. It has made me more compassionate and loving. I look back with pride when I think of students like you. There are so many students who come and visit. I feel a sense of fulfillment, of having done my job well.”

She wanted to give herself a treat for this, and has just come back from a wonderful trip to London, Rome, Florence and Lisbon. Though she doesn’t teach English any longer, she teaches at Sunday school, and has decided to get involved with community work.

There is something about people who leave gracefully when it’s time to move on. You feel it in the air when you listen to them. You see it in their eyes. You hear it in their voice. They seem to know what Rajiv (a teacher of mine who prefers to be addressed by first name) calls “beautiful and fullstop”. Miss Anne surely knows.

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I remember her voice, her saris and the way she wore her long hair – tied loosely to cascade naturally. She was effective without affect. And her history class was a storyteller’s miracle! How every small detail, date, and dynasty intrigued me! How effortlessly characters, places, and kingdoms stepped out of history to animate the present. Mrs. Nutan Ranjan came into class one day, and life I think was a different story.

Eleven years later, I was waiting at my old school to see her. I wasn’t sure if she was around but when someone told me she was, I walked the dirty Kanpur roads – a pedestrian’s nightmare, especially during monsoons – in the hope of being able to see her. Wondering if she’d recognise me, I gathered my thoughts and smiled at old school memories. Things had changed yet there was a familiar past lurking somewhere.

She emerged from the class, and everything seemed just as it was, 11 years ago. A hug was all it took to reassure that nothing indeed had changed. We quickly found a corner in an empty classroom to sit and catch up on lost time.

I: Ma’am, I work for a magazine called Teacher Plus and for the month of September, we are doing a special issue on remembering our teachers. So when I heard you were still in town, I just had to come and talk to you!
Nutan Ranjan: Forget all that! First tell me how you’ve been? I was really curious about you but had no news. Tell me everything!

I (smiling): Certainly! Well after I finished school, I moved to Delhi for a bachelors degree in financial management and then I got a masters in communication from the University of Hyderabad. Now I work for a magazine for school teachers called Teacher Plus.
NR: I am glad that you’ve done so well.

I: Thank you! So how has your experience been so far as a teacher? You see I have become a complete journalist type!
NR (laughs): OK, please don’t write anything down. It’s been a satisfactory experience so far. I am not teaching social sciences any more. I am teaching English. I am comfortable here in this space.

I: So I thought you had left the school?
NR: Yes, I was going to but then I didn’t. I had settled down here and felt more at home. But I kept wondering about you. I asked some of your classmates about you as well.

I: Oh, I just thought you weren’t around any more. And there was no other reason to come back and see the school. But have things changed here?
NR: Yes they have! There is more awareness among students as to career options. Students from business-class families are considering leaving home and studying medicine, engineering, or business management. So that’s one big change.

I: So you think students are better than they used to be? I remember my class being not particularly engaging. And there were only a few who were actually interested in exploring various options after school.
NR: No, actually I don’t think that’s the case. I think they are still the same. And there are only one or two who are really interested. They come and talk to me after class sometimes. And I do give them my time.

I: Oh just like I used to talk to you!
NR: Yes exactly. I remember our conversations. And remember, I told you to take an aptitude test at that career center in Lucknow. I remember you had a flair for writing. I am glad you’ve pursued your interest.

I: What else has changed?
NR: Another difference is that old students care to keep in touch and come and meet me regularly. There is one student from your class who comes every Teachers Day to wish me. New students do not have the same feeling towards teachers. So I think I miss that about students.

I: Anything else that bothers you?
NR: I think what disturbs me the most is the trend of coaching. What we teach in class should suffice if students pay attention. But this whole coaching business is making them complacent. Also, teachers who offer coaching tend to favour their students in general in terms of evaluating their examination papers. I don’t think it’s ethical at all. It’s actually ruining the student’s capacity to think for themselves. And a lot of spoon-feeding happens in coaching classes so it inhibits their ability to think and apply their intelligence.

I: That’s probably true! Are there any students in your present class who you’re happy with?
NR: Yes, there are always one or two who are really good. And I work with them harder. But the rest of them just lack discipline and motivation. What usually happens is, those who come from families with private businesses get a lot of privileges like a motor-bike, mobile phone or large pocket money, do not really care about studies. But then, that’s how it is in most places I think.

I: You know something funny? I changed schools after the tenth grade to go to a supposedly ‘better’ school. And upon being asked why I chose their school in the orientation class, my response was better discipline. And the whole class burst out laughing.
NR (laughs): Yes, I think that’s not surprising. But I am glad that you chose to go out and do something on your own.

I: Ma’am just one last question. Did you always want to be a teacher? If you weren’t one, what would you be?
NR: Well, I wanted to do a masters in social work and I even got a seat at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, but unfortunately I didn’t get the preferred specialisation. So I did a masters in sociology and followed it with a B.Ed. I just finished my masters in English recently. And I think I am happy with the choice I made.

I: Thank you so much for talking to me. It was a real pleasure to meet after so long and we must stay in touch now.
NR: Yes it was great to see you and I wish you all the best.

And then we exchanged contact details and parted with another hug. I was sad to leave for the eleven-year gap could not be bridged in a twenty-minute conversation. But we are just a phone call away now. And that is the beautiful circularity of life anyway; to constantly go away and return!

The author is a PhD student at the University of California at San Diego, USA. He can be reached at pawansinghh@gmail.com.

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When I reached class six, the school I went to decided that we needed more practice with numbers and theorems and therefore allotted two extra classes for the teaching of mathematics every alternate day. For me this was a nightmare come true for I considered mathematics a punishment on young minds. But by the end of the year I realised, to my great surprise, that the extra math classes were the ones most memorable, fun and lively! I so enjoyed my math classes that I even managed to score an 80 per cent in my final exams. The highest I ever scored in the subject. And the reason for that was Mr. Clifford Dragwidge – our math teacher in class six.

All of us addressed him as Cliffy. He liked being called by his nickname. That was a revelation to young students like us. While all our other teachers expected us to refer to them as Mrs. So and So or Mr. So and So, here was this teacher asking us to call him Cliffy. We realised he wanted to be a friend.

During those extra math classes, Cliffy was more of a storyteller than a math teacher. He taught us the subject through his stories. Although math continues to be in my ‘I don’t like’ list for that one year it became my favourite subject. And all these years later, the teacher I still remember and look up to is my Math teacher – Clifford Dragwidge.

Cliffy Sir, why did you and not anyone else tell stories at school, even though you were a ‘Mathematics Teacher’? Doesn’t seem to go together!
Mathematics being as boring as it is, the regular middle school student requires an extraordinarily imaginative mind to get the ideas and concepts across. Our unformed minds as children are like receptacles waiting to imbibe and soak in ideas, knowledge. In order to make sure that students remember the most of what is taught to them and more importantly that they are able to understand the relevance of what is being taught, story telling becomes an interesting medium to develop a youngster’s mind. Unfortunately the majority of our teachers in primary and secondary schools today lack this ability and instead find it easier to rely on a tried and tested format rather than going out of the way to make teaching a little more interesting. At the end, it’s all about the imagination you have. And moreover, I knew that the boys liked listening to stories than just morbidly browsing through text books and mathematical exercises. It helped me a lot when I taught Mathematics.

How many schools have you taught at so far?
St. Vincent’s High School, Asansol in West Bengal; Regina Mundi High School, Chicalim, Goa and St. Mary’s, Mount Abu in Rajasthan.

What do you think is the biggest difficulty faced by children at school?
Well… what I have experienced so far as a teacher is that, children are not allowed to talk in schools. This lacuna in the process of upbringing can be extremely detrimental to a child’s outlook. If a child doesn’t talk, he/she is not allowed the right of self-expression.

What do you think about corporal punishment? How far is it justified?
Corporal punishment must have been instituted to compensate for the inability to pay teachers enough to keep them from getting frustrated. On a more serious note though, through corporal punishment, you aren’t telling the child right from wrong. What you are actually telling him is how size determines right. You are telling him that one can get things done by bullying, pressurising and showing physical might.

Do you think all children are equally gifted? There surely must be cases where teachers have to employ special efforts toward a particular student. How does one deal with that?
Of course! No two kids are equally gifted. And therein lies the joy of social learning. Even the Gurukuls started with the same premise. A child can easily learn at home too, however what he would miss out on is the experience of learning about 50 other people and this in our country can mean 50 other cultures. It also helps the child understand how differently talented each of their kind is. As far as special efforts go, I believe each child deserves special efforts. Let the child talk and let us respond accordingly. This in itself would ensure a different approach to each child because each child asks differently and in his questions you can see how he/she thinks. However, when as a teacher, you are the initiator of all conversation, and also the end-all, there is a problem.

What about sports, games, fun?
The fact that you had to ask this question reflects the sad state of affairs. We’ve been talking about a child learning, all this while. What makes us think that the above three aren’t part of the deal? I’m sorry I failed to specify, however all my previous comments apply to these too.

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Janaki akka was much more than a teacher for me. She gave me a life I might never have had otherwise. I am what I am today because of her. It was her encouragement, support, warmth and affection that saw this child of a house help finish her graduation and find a job.

My parents, who were construction labourers, barely made enough money to feed the family; therefore school was only a distant dream. When our parents worked on the site, we would be there playing. One such day, a woman approached us and asked us if we would like to study. I had never wanted anything more in my life and I said YES! From that moment this stranger became my Janaki akka.

Although Ananda Bharati was not a regular school I didn’t mind because Janaki akka loved me for who I was. I was only five when I started going to Ananda Bharati but even then I noticed how much closer Janaki akka was able to come to us. While everybody else I met stayed far away from me, as if afraid to touch me, Janaki akka let me sit on her lap, held my hand when I walked and hugged me.

Janaki akka was a very different kind of teacher. We never felt that she was teaching us, it always seemed like she was learning along with us. Akka had the patience and perseverance to continue teaching us a concept until we all understood it. Even if it meant that she had to explain a point several times. Learning was fun at Ananda Bharati. Books were not the only source of learning there. Janaki akka would take us out into the garden, pick leaves and seeds with us. Using these we’d learn about different shapes, sizes, colours and also the numbers. Understanding fractions, additions and divisions therefore was never a problem.

I left Ananda Bharati after class five to join a regular school, and there I learnt that all teachers were not meant to be Janaki akkas. Teachers always stood near the blackboard with a stick in hand. Janaki akka was unique.

Although it’s been a decade since I left Ananda Bharati, my association with my teacher Janaki akka will continue to remain my source of strength.

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Should I take the pink sari? Oh no, look at the price tag! Maybe the red… . But I have so many of them!”

Yes, that’s me, invariably confused and indecisive. But, surprisingly, the two most important decisions in my life – my marriage and my career – were made without any hesitation or persuasion from others. I knew that I wanted to be a teacher when I was in the fifth grade.

Teaching, for me, has been a fulfilling experience, not only because I can share the knowledge I have, but also because I’ve been learning through it all. Soon after I did my Masters in French, I began teaching at Alliance Francaise. It was a novel experience; I taught young college going students and adult professionals. I truly enjoyed the experience of teaching adults. They were interested and motivated because they had chosen to learn the language.

After a year of studying in Paris, I got married, and my husband and I moved to the United Arab Emirates. I wanted to continue teaching adults, but as there were few opportunities at the time, I worked in Indian schools offering the CBSE and ICSE programmes.

Although I began as an “accidental” school teacher, over a period of time I found the experience very rewarding. There used to be moments of frustration and resentment (“Why don’t these kids take French more seriously?”), but the “Thank You” cards at the end of each year made it all worth the while. Although I taught in an all-Indian school, the children were Indian “with a difference”. They were considered pampered and spoilt, unprepared for the “real world” (translated – would not be able to cope with meeting the unrealistic academic standards and demands on our children back home). For example, I would be approached ever so often by parents wanting their children to switch their second language from Hindi to French, the latter considered easy because there were no literary texts to be studied. “We are from the south so we don’t speak Hindi at home,” a remark that never ceased to amuse me and always prompted my standard response, “But you don’t speak French at home either!”

“Fresh off the boat” in the UAE, with my strong ties with India, I too was quite critical of our students and their so-called lack of motivation and drive vis-à-vis their counterparts in India. With time, as a teacher and a mother, I found that our children were not so different from children back in India. Yes, air-conditioned school buses picked them up practically from their doorstep, their classrooms too were air-conditioned, but I don’t think these “comforts” made them less tough or less capable of surviving in an increasingly competitive world. There were students who were more diligent and motivated, some less, just like in schools anywhere else in the world.

The majority of the graduating class chose to pursue their undergrad studies in the US, and this did make me cynical, that the children were moving away from their roots, their culture. But I later realised how wrong I was. The children, though far from the shores of India, did imbibe basic Indian values – they were respectful to their teachers and elders, and they were proud of their Indian culture. They eagerly looked forward to all festivals. Holi, of course, was unofficially celebrated in school. In March, the day I saw ink-stained shirts of students, and heard complaints about them becoming wild and undisciplined, I knew it was Holi. Entertainment for teachers on September 5 often included dances, by the students, to popular Bollywood songs. In fact, I thought that these children had to be commended for their efforts to stay in touch with their culture, something that children in India probably take for granted.

After 15 years in the UAE, we moved to Baku, capital of Azerbaijan, which used to be a republic in the Soviet Union. I took a year’s break and then started working as a substitute teacher at the International School. This was, for me, a true “culture shock”, and it took me a couple of weeks to adjust to this new environment. When I say “culture shock” I do not mean it in a negative way at all. In fact, the teaching experience here gave me a whole new perspective, made me more open-minded and less judgmental.

Being in a multi-cultural environment is as much of an educative and enriching experience for the students as it is for the teachers. Truth be told, in the beginning I was quite shocked and perturbed. Coming from schools where students stood up and wished the teacher when he/she entered or left the classroom, or when answering the teacher, it took me a while to get used to students not standing up either to wish me or to answer questions. My first reaction to all this was, “They are so disrespectful,” but as I got to know the students better, I realised that they did not mean to be impolite or discourteous. Standing up and greeting the teacher was not expected of the students.

As educators, our values and priorities are different. For example, we expect our students to sit in straight, aligned rows, but at the International school, students were sometimes allowed to sit on the floor, or in the corridor outside the classroom while doing their work. The seating arrangement did not matter, as long as the students completed the work assigned.

“Child-centered education”, which we learned about during our B.Ed course, I saw practised in many ways in this school system. Until my exposure to this educational system, I always believed in the Indian system – how much more children learn and know, vis-à-vis children in International school systems. This, I found, was not entirely true. The Indian system still focuses on rote learning and memorising information given in text books. There is little opportunity for a child to give his or her opinion or analyse and interpret information in his own manner. I recall a remark made by my son’s Social Studies teacher in his Grade 10 semester exam. The answers, in my opiniion, were appropriate and adequate, giving all the relevant facts and dates. But the teacher felt that his answers lacked his interpretation and analysis of the historical facts, and were therefore insufficient. The fact that a 14 year old student’s opinion was considered significant and important, I thought, was wonderful. Creativity, innovative and independent thinking, encouraged by the International school system, I think, is commendable.

My intention is certainly not to open a debate on “us vs. them”. These are just observations that I made as a teacher in different academic environments. I consider myself fortunate to have had the opportunity to interact with students and colleagues of varied backgrounds and cultures and to have worked in educational institutions having different approaches, different priorities and expectations from their students. It has made me more open-minded and accepting of different behaviour, values and priorities in life. I have seen the impact diverse cultures have on our thinking, and our personalities.

My experiences as a teacher have, in many ways, made me the person I am. From being judgmental and rigid in my views as to what students (and people in general) should or should not be, it has taught me to be more tolerant and understanding with regard to differences in their attitudes, opinions and outlooks.

Recently, I have been toying with the idea of a “change,” of doing a job other than teaching. But I have never given this serious consideration because I know that teaching is what I can do and like to do.

The author has been a teacher of French and is currently settled in the USA. She can be reached at ravimahrook@gmail.com.

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Vijaya, is in grade 3 in an SSLC school and is extremely excited. Her teacher had asked her to specially bring a round biscuit to school and she was eager to know why…

Vidya, Prerna and Iqbal in middle school of an ICSE school, are busy making their projects. Their teacher had asked them to research on a particular tribe of people in Africa and present their projects at the school assembly the next week. They were divided into teams and each of them had to work on one particular aspect of that tribe. It was great fun working together, but more than that, they enjoyed finding things out together, discussing it and making their work better and better.

Why these examples, you may think… but I hope you have noted the common theme running across all of them… children learn by doing, irrespective of the Board to which they belong. A creative teacher, will always find ways of bringing “doing” into the classroom methodology.

In my experience of handling students across cities and boards, during my 18 teaching years and that many consulting years, I can vouch for the joy that activity or project-based teaching brings to the students. The excitement of doing something different, of making the classroom a lab for discovery, truly brings its own rewards, both for the head and the heart. Innovative teaching methodology is like water… finding its own level, irrespective of the board.

A common perception that I have seen amongst practitioners during my workshops is that, some boards are more friendly and conducive towards activity-based teaching or the project method while some of them only encourage rote learning so why bother doing things differently! But after trying out some new ways of presenting concepts, there is a near unanimous agreement (some will always remain skeptics!) that it can be implemented by all! After all, ALL teachers, SSC, CBSE or ICSE, get an average of 35 to 40 minutes in class to create history!

How do we know and understand that this is a more interesting way? Apart from the steadfastness of progressive forums from all around the country who share best practices, Teacher Plus included, it is easy to see the advantages. Let’s go over it together… you need not take my word for it!

1. Children enjoy it! And what we enjoy, we remember… simple!
2. The Project method follows the multi-sensorial approach to learning, which we now know ensures that all pathways to the brain are opened and therefore more effective learning and retention happens.
3. Complex concepts can be put forward in an easy and simple manner.
4. There is scope to identify and give room for children with different skills to produce a positive output.
5. Creativity is stimulated due to the mind being unfolded in different dimensions.
6. Encourages team work so essential in today’s world.
7. The scope of evaluation expands enormously as both content and skills can be evaluated. Individually and in a group.
8. Re-teaching before exams can be avoided, as there is stronger retention and so one can actually save time, rather than lose it.
9. There is only “productive” noise in class, as children are busy doing meaningful work. Therefore it is easy to keep the class orderly, as all of them are engaged in a stimulating manner.
10. And above all, it makes teaching an enjoyable experience and breaks the monotony that sets in after certain years of teaching. The practitioner is challenged to find new ways of presenting the same concept, depending on the group, each year. It reminds us that it may be the nth time that the teacher may be handling the same concept, but for the child, it’s the first.

Before, I give the impression that it is all roses, let me spend a few bytes on outlining the flip side. Of course, that is a very small price to pay for making the teaching – learning process enjoyable.

1. Planning – a must. No number of years of experience can be a reason for entering the class without a time, content and methodology plan.
2. Research – yes, we may need to spend some time researching and reading to keep ourselves updated with new trends and methods.
3. Evaluation – the process may involve a little more expansive record keeping as we are evaluating more number of skills. The joys of Excel, something that me and those of my time, did not have the luxury of!
4. And of course a constant engagement with the school to fight for the child’s right to have stimulating materials. Be they books, teaching materials, stationery, CDs, whatever.

And what is in it for me? we may ask as teachers. Do I get extra recognition, extra money, a special promotion? WHY should I do all this?

As we celebrate yet another Teacher’s Day, let us remind ourselves that we always have a choice; we have chosen to remain in this vocation. And so long as we stay with the choice, we owe it to ourselves to excel and do our best. And in the process, delight the child!

And thus, Vijaya learnt the use of adjectives by describing the biscuit that she brought, including the taste because her teacher asked her to eat it at the end!

Vidya, Prerna and Iqbal’s team won the 1^st prize for their project on the African tribes. They felt proud, because their whole class learnt from the information that they put up!

The author is a partner in Edcraft, Hyderabad, a firm engaged in making teaching-learning materials, conducting workshops and providing consultancy services. She can be reached at edcraft94@gmail.com.

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I had seven students (our numbers soon grew) who would eventually become my teachers – they taught me the real meaning of education; taught me to see through their eyes, taught me to read their drawings, which told me so much, taught me that to be worthy of imitation, simple as it may sound, it meant looking at every sphere of one’s being – thoughts, feelings and actions.

I had read about children below age seven learning through observation and imitation, but little did I know that imitation had many layers to it – physical, emotional and if I may say so – spiritual. A few incidents made me introspect further and realise that to teach you need to constantly learn.

In this school parents were allowed inside the classroom on birthdays. After the celebrations, the children usually went out to play. On one such day, a mother asked me if there was a rule in my class that children should rest their feet in a particular way while remaining seated on their chairs. I was taken aback by her question and asked her why she thought so. Only later did I realise that it was my own posture that all my 18 students were copying. From then on, I made sure that while sitting, my feet are firmly on the ground. Today as a remedial therapist, I realise the importance of right posture for students.

This incident further helped me understand that the more I worked on myself, the better results I saw in my students. Working on my speech – the content of what I spoke, how much I spoke(!), the tone of my voice – all mattered to me more than before. The class literally mirrors the teacher.

On another occasion, I got a call from Himachal Pradesh. It was from a parent of one of my students. The parent said though they were on holiday, the child wanted to speak to me and insisted on calling. All that the little girl wanted was to hear my voice. I was touched by the love. It was unconditional, strong and selfless. After that phone call I wondered, “Am I capable of selfless love?”

One of my young students had this habit of biting other children. Every time we caught him doing it we would ask him to go wash his mouth. One day he was about to bite a girl when he came running to me and said, “Teacher, I have to wash my mouth, can I go out to do so?” Could I ever match his honesty and innocence?

One little girl would never venture to play. For one whole year all that she did was to sit close to me and suck her thumb. Any attempt by the others to draw her into their play made her snuggle closer to me. I wondered when she would go and join the others. The next year saw a sea change. She was leading the others, giving orders as to who should do what while playing; she made sure everyone did some clearing up after play! (Fortunately I had never forced her to join her friends in play) But would I really have the patience and wisdom to always do the right thing with children?

In my first year as a teacher, I was disorganised with my personal things! I was so hard-pressed for time that I could not do any shopping. This meant that I ended up wearing an old pair of sandals for a long time. After the first term holidays, I wore new shoes to school. One little girl in my class told me, “You are so happy, no, teacher? I am also happy for you, because you have new slippers!” Was I worthy of such tender love? How much care did I take to improve myself when the all seeing eyes did not even miss my footwear?

Once when my son fell ill I had no choice but to bring him to the school. I left him in the office on a small settee. My class children knew he was sick. One girl had a curious drawing that day in the drawing activity sheet (we let children draw freely without any instructions or printed matter). She later explained to me that she was making tablets and medicines for my son to get better. What must I do to deserve this kind of affection?

One of my students did not have the motor skills necessary for his age. He could not hold a spoon and eat his lunch. Most often it was wasted. Then I decided one day to feed him myself (against the advise of my mentor), since he was going home hungry everyday. Would the other children want similar attention and if so how would I handle it? Equal treatment sometimes creates inequality! The children soon learnt I would do what each of them needed and not what they wanted. I realised I had to review my decisions each day and also review them periodically to change old decisions according to the changes in class.

I was new to this profession, absolutely new to this education based on a philosophy. I consulted my seniors/mentors before I took major decisions yet I was confused in many ways while dealing with everyday situations. Who was the right mentor to clear doubts? Which books would guide me through such day to day problems? I realised that in a school, tools and methods should be centred around the child. If methods or the curriculum become the primary focus, then we lose sight of the child. When the child is the primary focus, then the methods will lead to meaningful goals, otherwise we create a situation wherein the method becomes the end. If we lose sight of the child, while implementing methods they become rigid dogmas and are of no practical use. To educate children, we need values, not necessarily philosophies.

I realise that I am not perfect, I do not know everything. Do I still have the right to be a teacher? Well… I often dwell on this thought…comforted sometimes by the words of Rudolf Steiner – “…if you go through your teaching with true, noble and not mock skepticism, you will find that your diffidence has brought you an imponderable power which will make you particularly fitted to accomplish more with the children that are entrusted to you.”

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I come from a family of teachers and married into another family of teachers. The clan includes my mother, father and grandfather, several uncles and aunts on either side of the family tree, my father-in-law and his father, and (to top it all!) my husband. When I was growing up, I promised myself two things; one, that I would never live in this city, the one I was born in and grew up in; and two, that I would never go into teaching, if only because every other relative I knew or was told about was a teacher of some sort. In schools, colleges, polytechnics, in India and abroad, in cities and villages… just about everywhere! But having grown up I must accept the wisdom of the exhortation, “Never say never”. Not only do I live in the city of my birth, childhood and adolescence, but I also (this is where you hear the self-conscious clearing of the throat)… teach.

Of course, teaching is just one of the things that occupy my working day, but it is one that I come back to time and again and totally by the exercise of free will. The teaching has been across contexts and across different kinds of students. My very first experience with teaching was a post-summer job when I was about 18, in a small nursery school with a class of teary 3 year olds. The school was bang in the middle of a crowded residential area and many of the children were trying to run home, which was not too far away! So one of the first things I had to do was run after them and bring them back to school. Not very much ‘teaching’ happened but I did discover that handling live children was quite different from playing school with a bunch of kids your own age! That stint ended with the child I chased back into school refusing to get off my lap and my feeling a warm glow from an unrecognised source.

The next group I encountered in the role of a teacher was quite different. Postgraduate journalism students who decided it wasn’t quite worth the effort to get up early to come to a writing class run by a visiting teacher. So every day I would face a different group of five students – a rotating class, it seemed – and by the middle of the semester I had perfected the art of giving five minute summaries of missed lectures before starting on the lesson of the day. I really don’t know what kept me going back for more such punishment. I can only attribute it to my dogged belief in education, my passion for the subject, and the rare reward of a student’s smile of understanding, proof of a connection made between me, what I was talking about, and another mind.

Twenty-five years later, I continue to be a glutton for punishment – if, as many may think, one can call the teacher’s life a punishment. Low salaries, poor institutional infrastructure, lack of respect, recognition or professionalism, and little or no independence in making decisions about how to do the job. Though one cannot really compare teaching at the University level with teaching in the schools, a closer examination reveals that the differences are only a matter of scale. Yes, salaries are much better in colleges and universities than they are in schools, but again, they are much lower than in industry and other service fields such as medicine and law. On a scale of desirability, the university teacher’s job rates probably just a little higher than a schoolteacher’s. Other than in well-endowed private colleges, the infrastructure leaves much to be desired. The rewards are not anywhere near commensurate with the level of responsibility – the responsibility of moulding and inspiring minds, building character, inculcating values, and directing personal growth. It is just as difficult to find good teachers in colleges and universities as it is in schools these days. And also difficult to find good teachers for whom this is a first choice job.

The heartening thing though, is that there are still some who are there because they want to be there. Perhaps if these teachers talk more about what makes them stay in these jobs despite the relative lack of rewards (certainly in the financial sense) and the relative lack of prestige, others would begin to see it as a viable option.

For me, teaching is what makes all the learning worthwhile. Of course, learning through my work, my research and reading is enjoyable in and of itself. But the pleasure of sharing that with a group and looking at it through the lens of newness is an experience that is difficult to describe. To share an idea and find that it can take on an entirely new interpretation just by being placed amidst a group of open minds (well, some open minds) is an exciting process. To participate in the process of growth, intellectual, emotional and psychological, of an individual, is a privilege that is granted to few; sometimes even parents are excluded. But it is a privilege that can find its way into the teacher’s life, in most unexpected ways.

And that’s what keeps me coming back for more. I do have another job that gives me that luxury of teaching what I want when I want, and I realise that this is not something that any schoolteacher has and not many college teachers either.

I am not sure how I would have felt if I were in a full time teaching job handling all the routine procedures and politics, managing with meager resources and students who are not too motivated. But I do know this. That my other job does not give me what teaching does; it is the unquantifiable and indefinable rewards of interacting with young people, motivated or otherwise, and knowing that it is possible, despite all the odds, to maybe sow a seed of change, a thought, an idea, that might make some difference.

And you know what the best part is? Many years after a student has left your fold, to run into him or her, see a broad smile and hear a confident hello, before she/he rushes into a long and enthusiastic monologue about how much she/he remembers every (acceptable lie) little detail about what you said in class and how that has influenced her/his life. And even better, when you run into a student who never said much in class, but who, upon meeting you many years later, tells you all about his success… and you think, feeling that warm glow again ‘gosh, could I have possibly had something to do with that?’

This article was originally published in Edu-care, Vol 11, No.1, 2008. It is reprinted here with permission.

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Teaching, like any other profession happens best when teachers work together. In this article, the author takes a look at how important pre-service teacher training is and what aspects a training programme should concentrate on.

We are all aware of the fact that the English language is a key tool of communication in present day education. This is particularly so in the case of students learning science subjects. Most schools teach science in English.

In India we have a complex system of schooling with a variety of languages used as mediums of instruction. In English medium schools the use of English is not restricted to English classes alone. It has to be learnt and used appropriately to understand other subjects like science, mathematics, history, geography, etc. This is essential.

Even in schools where the medium of instruction is in the regional language, it becomes necessary for the teacher to make the learner realise the need for learning English. The language of higher education in India is English, and it is important for students to learn it appropriately in their schools.

This brings us to two major issues. Cooperative learning (or language across the curriculum) and learner-centric approaches. Teacher training programmes essentially need to focus on these aspects today.

Language across curriculum or cooperative learning believes in working together. In the Indian context, a teacher of English is often treated as someone who is not very important in the school organisation. (A teacher of science or mathematics is regarded as an indispensable member.) This attitude has affected the teaching/learning situation badly. Therefore, the teacher training programmes have to focus on developing right attitudes.

No teacher can work in isolation. A teacher of science needs help from a language teacher and vice-versa. A course book in English could have some chapters describing an experiment conducted by a scientist, or giving a detailed account of his life. In order to teach this appropriately, a language teacher may need to seek help from a science teacher. Similarly, often a subject teacher may require help from a language teacher. For example, study skills which have been largely part of language teaching could be fruitfully harnessed for learning lessons in science, geography, etc.

The concept of cooperative learning also extends to the learners. We have mentioned the notion of learner-centric approaches. Though most training programmes advocate this, teachers are a little skeptical about the usefulness of cooperative learning. Often, they express doubts as follows:

• Making learners work in groups can cause noise
• Some learners are likely to dominate others
• Teachers may not be able to manage several groups at one time – it may be strenuous.

Perhaps a closer look at some of the principles of cooperative learning may help us dispel these doubts.

• When learners work in groups – it could result in some amount of noise. However, this noise would be productive unlike the silence of the conventional classroom. Further, the discussion carried out by one group is unlikely to disturb other groups at work. By adopting group work, it is possible for us to demonstrate this in a teacher training programme.
• There is always a fear that some learners, ‘high achievers’ are likely to dominate slow learners. This may be true initially. But as days progress, the slow-learners begin to participate. It is well established that learning happens best when we teach. In a mixed group, high achievers take the initiative and help the slow-learners. In doing so they assume the role of teachers. Such a role provides for better conceptual clarity and understanding of the subject. In addition, the high achievers could also inspire the slow-learners to learn without losing their self-esteem. This aspect can also be demonstrated during a teacher training programme.
• Learning to manage groups is a skill which can be developed with a bit of practice. Handling group work is best learnt by working in groups and this can also be part of a teacher-training programme.

The present day pre-service and in-service teacher training programmes have been making attempts to incorporate these principles. The focus is on developing teachers’ language proficiency along with professional competence. This facilitates in enabling teachers to do what they should do in their schools.

The author is a Professor in the Centre for Training and Development at the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad. He can be reached at mohanrajsathuvalli@gmail.com.