Mothers have amazing teachers called children. My daughter Priya taught me a precious lesson when she was about four years old. Helping me arrange eggs in the refrigerator, she said, “Seven is not a partner number, six is a partner number.” When I sought clarification, she explained six eggs can be arranged so that each has a partner on the egg rack. But you can’t do that with seven eggs. Well, she had caught on to the concept of odd and even numbers. The term, ‘Partner numbers’, was her contribution. Much later, when she had to learn about odd and even numbers, I reminded her of this incident. We extrapolated the idea to prime and composite numbers with a small activity that consisted of arranging beads in rows and columns. Sixteen beads could be arranged in rows of 8 X 2 or 4 X 4. You could not do that with 17 beads. Back then, I didn’t realise, we were using constructivism.

Constructivism is the buzz word in today’s classrooms. Constructivist teaching is based on the belief that learning happens as learners are actively involved in a process of meaning and knowledge construction as opposed to passively receiving information. Learners are the makers of meaning and knowledge. Constructivist teaching fosters critical thinking, and creates motivated and independent learners.

Twomey Fosnot (1989) defines constructivism with reference to four principles: learning, in an important way, depends on what we already know; new ideas occur as we adapt and change our old ideas; learning involves inventing ideas rather than mechanically accumulating facts; meaningful learning occurs through rethinking old ideas and coming to new conclusions about new ideas which conflict with our old ideas. A productive, constructivist classroom, then, consists of learner-centered, active instruction. In such a classroom, the teacher provides students with experiences that allow them to hypothesise, predict, manipulate objects, pose questions, research, investigate, imagine, and invent. The teacher’s role is to facilitate this process.

One technique that could serve as a guide to facilitate constructivist learning is the use of the 5E model, the five E’s being Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate and Evaluate. A sample lesson plan for the topic ‘Angles’ in class five mathematics is given below. At the end of this lesson students will be able to: (i) recognise angles in complex situations, (ii) draw an angle of given measure and (iii) measure a given angle.

Engage: Provide each student with two sticks and ask them to join the sticks using any adhesive material. Let students move about to observe what the others have done. Let the teacher classify these creations depending on where the sticks are joined. All those joined at one of the two ends of the sticks are put together. If the sticks have been joined anywhere in the middle, those creations are put in a separate group (See Figure). Let students find reasons for such a grouping. This will lead them to the concept of angles. The teacher will have to introduce the term ‘angle’. However, the concept that an angle is the union of two non-collinear rays will be derived by the students. Do not expect the students to use any technical terms that they are unfamiliar with. Insist on the formation of the concept. (Inform students that group two contains more than one angle. The teacher may use these figures later when the concept of angle is well formed.)

Explore: Let the students explore the classroom and make a list of all the places where they see angles. Provide initial guidance if they face any difficulty. This activity can be done in small groups of three or four. Let students list on a chart paper places where they found angles. It would be a good idea to have them sketch their observations. The next step in the Explore stage would be to help them measure angles. At this stage perhaps the teacher’s demonstration would be effective as emphasis on the right way to use a protractor could be stressed on. Distribute sheets with angles to be measured. To introduce the students to types of angles, an activity could be arranged, where angles of different measures are put in three boxes labelled acute angle, right angle and obtuse angle. Have students measure the angles in each box and conclude the basis for classification.

Explain: Let students explain what acute angles, right angles and obtuse angles are. Let them justify their answers.

Elaborate: This stage requires the students to extrapolate their knowledge to new situations. Have them measure angles in various polygons and classify them. Have them create acute angles, right angles and obtuse angles with the right movements of their elbows. Identify angles in the letters of the alphabet. Show them architectural designs and have them identify various angles. Include structures like the Leaning tower of Pisa. Let students read about why it inclines. Draw a circle to represent the earth and show how a place on say 20 degree North latitude makes an angle of 20 degrees with the centre of the earth. Let them provide examples from their P.T. exercises where angles are involved. The whole focus is to be aware that angles pervade so many different spheres of daily life.

Evaluate: The step of evaluation could be in the form of a test, a quiz or even a craft project where the students create an object and identify and measure the angles in the craft article.

The following guiding principles of constructivism direct the learning process: posing problems of emerging relevance to students, structuring learning around primary concepts – the quest for essence, seeking and valuing students’ points of view, adapting curriculum to address students’ suppositions and assessing student learning in the context of teaching.

Constructivism uses a process centred, child directed approach. Langer and Applebee (1987) explain that when using constructivism a context is created within which students are able to explore new ideas and experiences. Within this context, a teacher’s role in providing information decreases and is replaced by a “strengthened role of eliciting and supporting students’ own thinking”. The approach focuses on shared responsibility; the onus of learning is on the student. Student empowerment and autonomy may be aided by encouraging students to ask questions and by making them active learners. Enthusiasm is maintained and learning is productive. Constructivism brings about correlation between subjects and hence knowledge acquired becomes contextual thus forging a bond with real life. Benefits are also accrued in the form of imbibing vital life skills as working in collaboration, decision-making and critical thinking. High time then that all teachers become familiar with the nuances of constructivism and change their classrooms from traditional teacher-centred classrooms to constructivist learner-centred classrooms.

The author is a teacher educator at Pushpanjali College of Education, Maharashtra. She can be reached at c.dcosta@rediffmail.com.

“They eat meat; I won’t play with them,” said my seven year-old cousin from Vadodara, of his Muslim friends, a year after the riots in Gujarat, post-Godhra. It struck me hard. Last month, the same child asked my mother, “Do you like Hindus or Muslims?” This question was with reference to a workshop that I was conducting at that time with a group of children belonging to a Muslim community. I don’t blame the child. But I worry about the world we are creating for our children. And each time, I’m compelled to think of what I can do. Become a teacher! That’s the answer I usually find myself with.

Teachers do influence, in significant ways, how their students look at the world and think about things. The impact may not be immediate, but it is there, going by the number of people who reminisce about their teachers and talk about the numerous things they feel grateful for. And it is this power to be able to nurture young minds that seems to be a crucial motivating factor for people to take up teaching as a career.

“I know that I have been shaped by a number of very influential teachers and I feel this sense of wanting to be that kindling influence, without sounding too Abdul Kalam-ish,” says Shaunak Sastry. He is a postgraduate in Communications Management from Mudra Institute of Communications Ahmedabad, and is now studying at Purdue University. He already teaches undergraduate students, and will start looking for research/teaching positions once he completes his PhD in 2012.

He shares, “Teaching as a profession is a tough choice, and was a really tough one for me, what with me being a media professional for about two years post MICA. I think the big difference I see in teaching as a profession is how relevant I feel at the end of the day; I’m no longer chasing a random number but making students think, albeit at gunpoint on occasions. I feel that through pedagogy I’m getting students to question and interrogate the world around them, instead of taking it in on a platter.”

Ekta Singla, who lives in Mumbai, thinks of a career in teaching as “a platform to make a difference.” She has had a fair bit of first-hand experience to say so. Ekta taught briefly at Ambhata, a small hamlet in remote Maharashtra. She also worked with the Bhopal-based NGO Eklavya for two months. She conducted workshops with teachers, which opened many new avenues for her, and made her think of education with a fresh perspective. After Eklavya, she taught English for a month at a slum in Delhi (Govindpuri) with an NGO called Katha. She says, “These experiences were mostly with underprivileged kids, and it made me feel good that I was helping them grow by empowering them. That is how I look at the teaching profession. It is really a channel to empower people. The classroom is a free space which makes a teacher very powerful; hence she can energise the classroom with new thoughts and unconventional practices. It gives her the space to be creative.” Ekta will soon enroll in a Master’s program, and so full time teaching is still a few years away. For now, she will continue with part-time teaching assignments.

Aravinda Bhat, who hails from Manipal, shares some of the ideas that Shaunak and Ekta hold. Aravinda is currently writing his M.Phil. dissertation at the English and Foreign Languages University in Hyderabad, and wants to become a teacher. Like Shaunak and Ekta, he believes that teaching has a great deal to do with training students to think creatively and critically. “It is the teacher’s responsibility to offer guidance and support to his/her students. This means that he/she is in constant touch with growing, curious minds, and also in touch with the latest scholarship in his/her subject. I find this very fulfilling,” says Aravinda. He thinks that becoming a teacher will enable him to fulfill his obligations to the society. While he was growing up, he used to hear from his grandparents and other elders that teaching is a noble profession, and Aravinda was quite impressed by the picture they painted for him. He is now skeptical of holding such a view, because he is only too aware of the fact that teachers are as human as other professionals. Nevertheless, Aravinda’s belief that education is crucial to personal growth and socio-economic progress has led him to seriously consider a career in teaching.

Aravinda is visually challenged. He says, “I am particularly interested in the education of disabled children and in alternative education. Good education is critical to enable disabled people to become confident and contributing members of the society and to end discrimination against them. I also want to educate parents of disabled children about disability and help them make the right choices for their children.” However, he is quick to add that he would also like to teach in ordinary schools, because he does not want to be pigeonholed and limited.

While Aravinda appreciates the well-rounded education he received at home and at school, and therefore wants to share it with others, Vivek Sunder (who has just completed his MA in English and wants to do a B.Ed.) wants to be a teacher because he was not happy with the education that he received. Vivek shares, “I faced a lot of problems in life that I was not able to handle. Education did not help in the least bit. Things were so bad that I began to question whether it was worth living this life, whether I had any role at all to play. I wasn’t able to handle my emotions. I went through many such phases starting from adolescence for which I was so ill-prepared. I survived it only to face more problems. So, I felt that education should not just prepare one to get a job or to be multi talented. It has a greater role to perform. It has to prepare one for life, as a whole, which is no mean task. It has to make one strong to face the world. It has to help one make the right choices in life. It has to teach one to love life and live life and make this world a better place for oneself and for others. I want to learn and share so that the few kids I am able to influence will not have to go through what I underwent.”

For young people opting for teaching as a career, the biggest hurdle is often financial. Most parents want their children to be financially secure and comfortable. Other young people, often working in BPOs, media companies, multinational corporations, publishing houses, etc., have bigger pay packets and more glamorous lifestyles. However, the ones who are really committed are not deterred by such considerations. In some cases, the person opting for a teaching career belongs to a family that is financially well-off and may be able to support his/her dreams. But, not every young person hoping to become a teacher has this luxury.

Shaunak says, “I’ve been lucky to have family that supported my leaving work cold turkey and applying to grad school, and they’ve always seen me as the academic type, and so that helped. Although the digs amongst my cohort about my relative poverty never end, I suppose it varies. Some of them look at my choice as non-traditional, some believe I’ve done it because I have parents to fall back on to help me financially. How I wish!” And fortunately for Aravinda, his parents and grandparents think that teaching as a career is a good choice. His father is a teacher, and many of his distant and close relatives are in the teaching profession, so they have a special liking for it. Aravinda shares, “Ever since I can remember, I have never expected to see teachers earn as much as other professionals do. So, I will not be disappointed if I, as a teacher, am not paid as high a salary as some of my peers are paid.”

Ekta feels that a teacher’s job may pay less, but that is compensated for by the immense respect one gets and from the freedom to do things the way one desires. What she also considers a reward is the instant feedback from students regarding whether they are able to grasp her explanation or not. This gives her a feeling of contentment and helps her improve her teaching skills. Ekta says, “During my travels and my experiences with different NGOs, I have met new and interesting people. I realised that many avenues are opening up in the education sector, thanks to globalisation. The education sector is growing three-fold and the demand for experienced curriculum design professionals is growing in NGOs and schools. Teachers with many years of experience and those keen to bring creativity in education are in huge demand. At the same time corporate houses are recruiting teachers and students for their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programmes. The sector is just growing day by day.”

Vivek is not too bothered about the financial rewards or lack thereof. He says, “Money is important but not all important. There are other things that give greater pleasure; for instance, helping people, loving children, sharing whatever you have. My needs are little. I don’t need much to be happy. But I can’t expect my family to be like me, so I need to earn enough to keep them happy as well. I think a teacher’s job should provide just enough. Also, I don’t wish to compare with others. If they earn more, good for them. Happiness does not depend on how much you earn, but how you are able to manage your needs with what you have.”

Santosh Mahapatra, from Sambalpur in Orissa, is currently pursuing his M.Phil. at the same university as Aravinda. He has had some teaching experience, and is hoping to take up teaching as a career. He has an interesting view to offer. He says, “Human beings have always remained mysterious. It is very difficult to say what they are thinking. Sometimes, some noble thoughts of doing things for the benefit of society may push somebody towards taking the decision of becoming a teacher. There are a few people who are reformists by nature. They feel that it is their responsibility to bring changes in the society which in turn may lead to the betterment of the society. Teaching appears to be the fittest option available to them.” However, just like Aravinda, Santosh refuses to be taken in by the romanticised view of teaching as an essentially noble profession. He says, “The above situations are all about making sacrifices. However, there are others who are escapists. They find teaching a less stressful job than other options of employment and therefore, they go for it. Thus, making generalisations about young people getting into the teaching profession leaving behind offers of material benefits is a next-to-impossible thing.”

Whatever else is said about teaching this much is true about the profession: it does allow you the power to influence and inspire a future generation, a power that no other profession offers. Despite the fact that quite a few people are attracted to it because of the other perks that the job offers there still are young people who want to teach because they truly want to make a difference. And that gives us hope.

The author is an M. Phil. student at the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad. He can be reached at chintangirishmodi@gmail.com.

Related article

Unsung and unhonoured for too long

The Sixth Pay Commission’s recommendations that teachers be given substantially higher salaries is a welcome, if belated, recognition of the role of the academic community in building the foundations of our democracy. Teachers have gone unsung too long.

Yet moves to implement the new pay scales and pay back-wages to school teachers have led to an uproar. On the one hand, parents are reluctant to pay higher school fees. Private schools, on the other, say they cannot pay the new scales unless fees go up substantially. The issue is a highly contentious one.

At the start of the new school year parents received heavy demands for ad hoc amounts as extra fees from schools. These demands were hastily calculated and people suspected that schools had inflated their needs to profit from the situation.

In many cases parents found the fee hike simply unaffordable, especially if they had two or three children in school. The protests against the hike have been unprecedented. In several big city schools, non-functional PTAs were hastily resurrected and meetings called to discuss the issue.

At a PTA meeting of a prominent school run by civil servants, parents vociferously debated the fee hike for over two hours, asking for more transparency in the school’s accounts. They were in no mood to pay up. The irony was that about half the parents present were government servants who have themselves benefited from a big pay hike!

In places like Allahabad and Faridabad, parents’ groups held protest rallies outside schools and blocked roads to express their ire. In the IT hub Gurgaon, protesting parents pointed out that many of them have lost jobs in the current economic downturn and cannot afford to suddenly pay more fees. Some school managements privately acknowledge the problem and are advising parents to negotiate fees, staggering payments to prevent the withdrawal of children from schools. In Hyderabad too, there have been murmurs of protest to force managements to roll back the fee. In the recession-hit diamond processing hub of Surat, employers raised a token fund for unemployed diamond cutters’ children’s school fees but that is obviously not enough.

In December 2008 an ASSOCHAM study had anticipated the problem and opposed the fee hike which it expected would be in the 40 per cent range. ASSOCHAM said that given the economic recession, downsizing in the corporate world and inflation, a hike would put parents under severe pressure.

In Delhi, a parents’ group took the matter to the High Court. The Delhi government then told ‘unaided’ schools that they could increase monthly fees up to a maximum of Rs 500 (roughly a 20 per cent hike) but left a loophole by permitting undefined increase in development fees. In May 2009 the Delhi High Court permitted a 25 per cent hike in school fees, with retrospective effect. The case is still ongoing.

One consequence of the fee hike is a sudden rush for enrolments in government schools in the capital at the middle school level. Instead of the 1.40 lakh students joining the sixth standard, admissions in 2009 have reached a record 2.10 lakh. Ironically, Delhi’s Education Minister claims that this is an achievement resulting from its new, streamlined online admission system!

If schools are at the receiving end of parental ire today it is because too many schools have profiteered from benefits like state subsidised land, without passing on the subsidies to students. Schools have long been notorious for annual fee hikes and various other financial demands. Advocate Ashok Agarwal of the NGO Social Jurist says some schools made false representations to the government, inflating figures for the number of teachers enrolled, to argue that they be permitted to ask for more fees.

While parents in the metros and big cities may be able to pay up the increased fees, the situation is different in smaller towns. The principal of a small town private school in the interior of Madhya Pradesh fears that she will lose more teachers to government schools as she cannot pay higher salaries. Raising the fee, she believes, is not an option given the low incomes of most parents.

Meanwhile teachers in many private schools apprehend that they will not get the hike – and arrears are out of question. It is one of the ironies of our education system that government school teachers, among whom absenteeism has been found to be among the highest in the world, are being rewarded with monetary benefits while private school teachers, who lack the same bargaining power, are far less likely to benefit.

It is clearly time for more transparency in the financial management of schools and greater democracy in the school hierarchy. Schools cannot be treated like just any other private business.

The author is a veteran journalist and activist based in New Delhi who writes on gender and development issues. She can be reached at sujatamadhok@gmail.com.

Teacher Plus: Who Teaches, Who Learns

A magazine for teachers always begins with one or more notions of teachers. When we as publisher’s editors thought of Teacher Plus, our interest in reaching out to teachers somewhat overtook the importance of working this out at the outset. Today, we would have set out what would be called a teacher/reader profile. The fact is that teacher-groups in schools defy easy categorising, and rightly so. Needs differ, teaching contexts vary widely, and a large number of men and women move into teaching without greatly wanting to do so. The regret that people place behind this last fact is misplaced. (We are not critical in the same way of reluctant computer operators or civil engineers who do not like what they do.) Teachers are also required to work at a high tempo and have very little leisure. All this complexity makes planning a magazine for teachers an interesting challenge, but we didn’t see this richness at the time, at least not consciously.

Twenty years ago, as we planned TP, we started with, I think, a simplistic idea of a teacher who looks for ways to improve her teaching, who has time to read and to write to share his own ideas. We had keenness on our side, ideas and abundant energy, and had to fit these into a very small budget. We visualised a typical, magazine-interested person. We wanted to write for teachers, and we wanted them to write for other teachers, and of course for us, meaning that their ideas would give us insights into our books. We also hoped that teachers would see TP as an opportunity for them to express their opinions.

The leading and inspired planners of TP were Lakshmi and Rema. Some of the tasks before us were these – how could we make TP interesting and entertaining, with a lightness of touch? In what way could we balance information about good teaching with hands-on ideas and activities? How could we create a network of teachers who would continue to keep in touch with one another? How well we achieved these purposes is for readers of TP to judge, but the effort continues. The subscriber list shows us a block of loyal readers, and if a school subscription is multiplied by at least three teacher-users, that takes us far. Our list of teacher-writers has also grown and we could not have done without the support of those who write for us regularly.

Meanwhile, twenty years ago, we puffed and panted over each issue, often wondering – as we saw the heaps finally ready to paste and post – if we should consider a quarterly. Printing fall-out, four-colour posters was always an achievement. It meant appealing to a printer to print them for the same price as the other pages in the magazine. It almost always meant making narrow eyes at senior colleagues at a time when TP could not support the cost of these special features. Getting a postal concession was a great achievement, I remember, and we celebrated.

It occurs to me that it is relatively easier to start something than to continue, sustain and enrich it. We owe so much to so many.

Usha Aroor
Editor from 1989-90

Some musings on the beginnings

After a few years of conducting workshops for teachers and going to far-flung places like Dhanbad and Nagaland, far from the normal beat of both sales personnel and publishers, the feeling grew in the Educational Resources Division of OL (Orient Longman as it was then known, now Orient Blackswan) that it was imperative we do something more for teachers. Something that would bring them together as professionals, to share experiences, provide a forum for discussions and offer them resources – new teaching ideas and projects. There was much discussion about what we could and should do. What took shape was the idea of a teacher’s magazine. I can tell you it was discussed ad nauseam in-house and there were many sceptics with questions such as: Will teachers see us as independent players with a genuine concern for their situations and not just wanting to sell our books? How would we distribute the magazine? How would we fund the issues? How frequent should they be – a bi-monthly or a quarterly? Can we afford a full-colour production? How could we attract advertisers? The questions went on …

In-house there was an inspired core group of staff that continued with the detailed planning… there were Lakshmi Rao, Manognya Reddy, Arvind Lokhare and myself. We decided Teacher Plus (as it was christened) had to appeal to a wide cross-section of teachers providing hands-on material for teachers of maths and science, language and arts and crafts. I think it was our enthusiasm rather than the financial outlay, which persuaded the then Chairman of Orient Longman, the late Raja Rameshwar Rao, to give the project its blessings.

One of the things that had emerged from the workshops was the lack of good reference material available to primary school teachers. How would they create interesting projects and activities for their classes without access (in those days) to even a good library – thus emerged the idea that the middle spread of the magazine would be a colour poster that could be put up in classrooms. On the back of the poster would be the related activities and teacher information. We also realised after the discussions with Girish Mondkar that with the budget allocated we would not be able to afford it. So, we went to interested commercial firms and organisations to sponsor the middle spread. We contacted a mailhouse and grappled with a database of our teacher contacts – at first it was anyone who had come to an Orient Longman workshop anywhere in the country. The first few issues were to be free to all teachers.

Quickly we realised that all of us in-house were in book publishing mode – we had no idea of the intricacies of magazine publishing. So began our search for someone in Hyderabad with that expertise. One of the best things that happened was my meeting with Usha Raman and her coming on board as the (incognito) editor and with her expertise we were well on our way to designing mastheads and features and the layout. I am so pleased that Usha is still associated with the magazine and that she now writes the editorial!

We scoured our contacts and pleaded and cajoled them for the first articles and it seems that Teacher Plus has not had a dearth of contributions from interested teachers since those first issues of the magazine. The first issue went out in July 1989.

Well done Teacher Plus! It is heart warming to know that you are now almost a glossy magazine coming out monthly. Who knows this year might see the first digital version of the magazine being e-mailed to teachers rather than reaching them by snail mail.

Rema Gnanadickam
Asst Editor from 1989-90

Continuing to inspire teaching

In this world of growing competitiveness, school education by no means remains untouched. Teachers in our schools are faced with the reality of swelling crowds in classrooms, pressures to ‘produce outstanding results’ in annual and Board examinations, the need to organise extra-curricular activities in school and assist in administrative work. To deal successfully with all of these and deliver meaningful and effective teaching in classrooms, rarely do teachers have the facility of in-service training or updating of their skills or subject knowledge on an ongoing basis. This creates stress, which affects their performance in the classroom. Teacher Plus in its span of 20 years has endeavoured to provide that support to school teachers across the country.

As part of Teacher Plus in its early days, it was a lot of thrill and excitement to plan, execute and deliver each issue (then a bi-monthly) with a small team and a modest budget to the teaching community. We hoped that the topics and ideas addressed in TP were the ones teachers looked for and that at the end of the day, the magazine could bring about inspired teaching in classrooms. The letters from readers in small towns and metros gave us the confidence and assurance.

When I left TP in the able hands of Lakshmi Rameshwar Rao, Usha Raman and Sheel, I knew they would take TP to great heights. It gives me great pleasure to see that TP has blossomed so well and makes me proud to think I was part of the magazine as it evolved. I wish to thank the present TP team for giving me the opportunity to reminisce about my days at TP.

Congratulations to the current team of TP for its remarkable success.

Deepa Chattopadhyay
Editor from 1990-2002

Passing over

July 2001: I had just got a job on Teacher Plus, and was very excited. Here were the voices of schoolteachers who worked within a far from ideal education system, and came up with wonderful ideas for teaching-learning. Their experiences within the conventional, formal education system provided lessons for other teachers. There were also teachers and administrators whose suggestions, if executed in the classroom and the school, could impact learning tremendously. Here, for an erstwhile teacher, was meaningful interaction with other teachers, and to be able to help present their ideas to their fraternity gave me immense satisfaction.

The other high point was the range of articles – they went right across school, and also covered other issues that were relevant to school. Anyone who read the magazine, whether parent or teacher or school administrator, would invariably find something to think about – a change for the better would surely follow. My understanding of and interest in education grew by leaps and bounds.

There were problems, though. Publishing, like any other industry, worked (and works) on profits – and here was this tabloid that was an out-and-out loss maker. A question mark hung in the air every time a new issue was released: would the subscription base go up enough to make it sustainable? Sadly, it never did – what kept the magazine going was the then owner Orient Longman (now Orient Blackswan), and the firm belief, on the part of everyone working on it, that Teacher Plus made a difference.

In 2004, the mostly black-and-white bimonthly moved to colour. Later, financial support from Wipro Applying Though In Schools (WATIS) enabled better production quality, and Teacher Plus’s makeover to a full-colour monthly magazine followed shortly after it was taken over by Spark-India in 2007.

Teacher Plus remains one of the voices of teachers, NGOs, and others interested in education. Yet, many, many schools and teachers continue to work with ideas no longer effective, or remain impassive. Isn’t it time we recognise ourselves as professionals, and deliver our best?

Sheel
Editorial team, 2002-Present

Of teachers, magazines and other media…

We were in this small school some 100 km from Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu, engaged in a discussion with the mathematics teacher on fractions. He was excitedly demonstrating how he taught fractions to children. He elaborated on this method of using the figure of a chapathi, cutting it into 4 equal pieces to demonstrate the idea of a quarter (1/4) to children. In course of the ensuing debate we came upon improper fractions and the conversation stumbled. It was not possible to explain 7/4 using the idea of ‘parts of a whole’. To explain 7/4 we would have to imagine 7 chapathis being shared by 4 children. And this is completely different from sharing one chapathi among 4 children.

I was aware of the implications of using two fundamentally disparate notions to explain the same concept having engaged in this discussion in some seminar I had gone to a year ago. In a school in Udaipur, the mathematics teacher has worked with this and other similar issues and developed various methods to build a child’s understanding of abstract concepts in mathematics using real, concrete examples.

The teachers in that Thanjavur school are sincere, dedicated individuals keen on bringing ‘good quality’ education to their children. They learn from their own experiences and evolve teaching methods. This is valuable and at least in contexts like teaching children, there is immense value in reinventing the wheel.

But it is also essential for teachers to be able to tap into an existing knowledge base like the Udaipur school. That would help them further explore other possibilities; even just as a trigger to think, to create and to invent. A classroom needs as many inputs and sources as possible to constantly refresh and enrich the teaching-learning engagement.

Lakhs of teachers across the country are engaged in the teaching learning process and are constantly struggling, innovating and creating knowledge. There is a need for teachers to engage with each other, to share, to question, to elicit information and exchange ideas and thoughts. It is essential to build a collective platform that can bring this knowledge together.

Teacher Plus was not envisioned as a magazine for one-way communication to the teacher, but as a carrier of knowledge to and from teachers. What started in tabloid format with a small subscriber base in 1989 has steadily evolved and grown into the form it is in now. Teacher Plus has constantly reinvented and rejuvenated itself to keep itself contemporary and that is the most crucial element in an endeavour like this.

The effort to energise our schools with the spirit of inquiry, of experimentation, of constant discovery is not an easy task. Twenty years since Teacher Plus’ inception – when it was way ahead of its time – the world has dramatically changed.

Today improvement in the quality of education and the need for reform in schools are topical issues every school in the country is engaging with. Communication has taken myriad forms in the age of the internet. Access to dependable information and a place to share one’s own perspectives has never been more crucial.

Teacher Plus’ efforts have been commendable in constantly being in touch with the reader while keeping the content contemporary. Going forward Teacher Plus will need to continue expanding its reach to tap into the collective knowledge of the teaching community while straddling multiple means of communication with them – be it a teacher in that remote village in Tamil Nadu or the elite schools in metropolitan Bangalore.

Prakash Iyer
Wipro Applying Thought in Schools

Ever since science has become a part of environmental studies at the elementary school level, its importance is being neglected in the curriculum. Because it now finds space in the same book as social studies, the practical aspects of science at primary and upper primary levels are being ignored and the subject is being taught like social studies, emphasising rote learning.

Besides this, with the emphasis on the social studies, detailed pictures have been introduced in the text books which have become sterile visuals while science demands line diagrams and recognisable structures. Not only are there no diagrams in the textbooks, even the teachers no longer draw them on the blackboard.

The author is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Unfolding Learning Potentials, Jaipur. He can be reached at Lalit_culp@rediffmail.com.

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

How does one handle aggressive behaviour in class?

Children who are aggressive in the classroom provide a considerable challenge to the teacher. The teachers can either aggravate the behaviour or tone it down, depending on how she handles it. There is no doubt at all that the magic wand lies with both the teacher and the parents and either can move mountains by using it judiciously.

To eschew aggressive behaviour, it is important to first study what triggers it, then classify it and finally eradicate it. The parent, the teacher and the child need to work as a team in order to succeed. Aggressiveness is an act that develops the aggressor while it reduces and violates the rights of others. The aggressive child tries to overcome others physically and often just wants to hold sway to prove a point. A lot of factors or a combination of factors produces aggressive behaviour in a child. Some of these are low self-esteem, stress at home or in the peer group, abuse, loneliness, exposure to violence, exposure to media, frustration, temperament, and lack of communication skills.

The first thing a teacher needs to do is to study the home environment and talk to the parents. Many a time, it has been found that, a child who is disciplined at home gives vent to his feelings in school. In such cases, the parents need to be counselled by the school counsellor and the teacher. The child also needs to be encouraged to behave well and what better way than leading by example. Children often imitate adults. The same is the case when a teacher is more strict than she needs to be. So here the fault lies with the adults and they need to modify their behaviour in order to reduce aggressiveness in the classroom.

Peer pressure and the company of students with aggressive behaviour can also make children aggressive. Here the whole group needs to be addressed and the teacher needs to take remedial measures to carefully get the children to think differently. The teacher needs to exercise extreme caution and remain patient. I have personally dealt with an aggressive class and found that with frequent interactions and positive reinforcement, and by appealing to their good senses, a class can metamorphose from an aggressive class into a proactive one. The teacher needs to be a role model for things to fall into place.

Raising the child’s self-worth also goes a long way in curing aggressive behaviour. Teachers can reward a student when a specified behaviour does not occur, or when it occurs below a designated frequency or duration level. Differential reinforcement of other behaviours (DRO) is a way to decelerate behaviour when behaviours other than the target behaviour are systematically reinforced. When positive behaviour is commended and negative behaviour is looked down upon in a subtle manner, aggressive behaviour automatically diminishes.

In today’s world, the media also plays a pivotal role in accelerating or decelerating aggressive behaviour. Wrong messages from the media can have a negative influence and hence parents and teachers need to filter the child’s exposure to media. They need to be selective about the types of television programs that their children watch. Television shows that display violence as humorous should be especially avoided. On the other hand, programmes with good values can help the child be positive.

Yoga, meditation and introspection must be a part of the school curriculum and parents must also encourage their children to practice the same at home. This will definitely help in calming their senses. The effect would be even greater if parents and teachers also partake in these programmes with the child. Everything possible must be done to build a conducive environment at home and school which will help foster only positive behaviour.

The child must engage in enough physical activity every day, because this will help use energy effectively and not use it to propagate aggressiveness. The school must have enough sporting facilities and parents need to make sure that their child indulges in at least one physical activity after school hours.

The onus is on us as parents and teachers to dissipate aggressive behaviour and also practice good behaviour as preaching alone will take us nowhere! I think aggressiveness can be minimised if we follow the words of Dorothy Law Nolte

If a child lives with. . .
Criticism, he learns to condemn.
Hostility, he learns to fight.
Fear, he learns to be apprehensive.
Jealousy, he learns to feel guilt.
Tolerance, he learns to be patient.
Encouragement, he learns to be confident.
Praise, he learns to be appreciative.
Acceptance, he learns to love.
Approval, he learns to like himself.
Recognition, he learns that it is good to have a goal.
Honesty, he learns what truth is.
Fairness, he learns justice.
Security, he learns to trust in himself and others.
Friendliness, he learns the world is a nice place in which to live.

So instead of blaming the child and condemning him for being aggressive, let us all try and help the child to fight aggression in the class and at home. The magic wand lies in our hands!

The author is the Principal and Director of Pallavi Model School in Hyderabad. She can be reached at manjugupta09@hotmail.com.

One of the topics that is covered in nearly all syllabi, whether state or central, is health and disease. Typically this appears in the textbook in some form in class 8 or 9. The CBSE 9^th class syllabus has a topic called “Health and its failure” and similar themes occur under different titles across chapters dealing with human biology and social health.

Almost every year we are faced with a new and alarmingly quick-spreading infection. A few years ago it was the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and then it was avian flu and most recently, swine flu. In between we are visited by several more familiar infections including chikungunya, dengue, malaria and various forms of meningitis. One of the class periods under the unit “Health and its failure” might be devoted to the issue of global outbreaks of disease and the spread of such “new” infections. The topic offers the opportunity to discuss a variety of issues, some related to biology, others related to public health policy and yet others to statistics and epidemiology. While some of these areas may be quite complex, it is important – not to mention useful – for young people to get an idea of how civic life is closely related to individual health.

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After two months of vacation, children usually look forward to getting back to school. A week before the place of leisure throws open its doors, the ‘eager’ beavers of ‘one form’ gravitate to their favourite stationary shop to buy the new ‘feathers’ and ‘little tails’ they require to keep themselves entertained in the garden. ‘Little tails’, ‘feathers’, ‘leisure’, ‘garden’ ….these are not usually terms we associate with school. In case you are wondering if I have lost it, let me assure you my fellow index fingers, I have not! Why am I referring to teachers as ‘index fingers’? Believe it or not that is what we are. We are all ‘index fingers’, or as the Americans call it, ‘pointers’. ‘Teacher’ comes from the verb ‘teach’, which in turn comes from the Old English ‘taecan’ meaning ‘to show, point out, give instruction’. Since people normally use their index fingers to point, during the late 13^th century, the word ‘teacher’ was coined to refer to this particular finger! Years later, the word was used to refer to someone who pointed children in the right direction: the humble teacher.

We teachers have been called all kinds of names by our students, but no one would have pointedly called us ‘index finger’! True, the term is not very insulting, but it is not a term of endearment either. You may remain indifferent if someone were to call you ‘index finger’, but how would you react if you were labelled ‘slave’? Have I got your attention now? We often refer to ourselves as ‘pedagogues’ and the profession that we practise as ‘pedagogy’. Sounds much more impressive than ‘teacher ’and ‘teaching’, doesn’t it? In ancient Greece a ‘paidagogeo’ meaning ‘to lead a child’, was nothing more than a slave. It was the job of this individual to accompany his master’s son to the school and the gymnasium and make sure that the child performed all the tasks that were required of him. In other words, the pedagogue supervised the child’s education. Since this was the task that ‘index fingers’ also performed, the term pedagogue soon began to be used with teachers. In case you are wondering why the slave accompanied only the sons, the answer is fairly simple: in ancient Greece, girls were not allowed to go to school or the gymnasium. The word ‘gymnasium’ comes from the Greek ‘gymnos’ meaning ‘naked’, and in the old days a gymnasium was a place where men exercised in the nude. This was also another reason why women were not allowed to sit in the stadium during the Olympic Games: most athletes who took part didn’t have anything on!

Nothing much has changed for us index fingers: we slaved in the past, and we continue to do the same even now. School teachers often complain of having to teach five to six hours every day and not having any spare time. How can one not have any spare time in a place which means ‘spare time’ or ‘leisure’? The Greek word ‘skhole’ from which we get the modern day ‘school’ means ‘things done in one’s spare time’. A school was originally a place where people went in their spare time to discuss things. Aristotle and Plato had learned discussions with their students; as time went by, the time spent in having these learned discussions was called ‘school’. How things have changed! In the modern world, ‘leisure’ is not a word that one would normally associate with ‘school’. It’s a place where children experience ‘stress’, ‘pain’ ….everything except leisure. Nowadays, when we think of a school, the first image that comes to mind is a building. It is a place where teachers do all the talking and the students listen. The syllabus being what it is, there is little or no time for discussion. It is not the garden where children are meant to have fun. The term ‘kindergarten’, by the way, literally means ‘children’s garden’. How many of our schools have a garden nowadays?

Every year before school begins children have great delight in buying pens, pencils and uniforms. When we visit a school, we often complain that all kids look alike. It is because they all wear the same uniform that makes them look the same. Why do we complain when it is the function of a uniform to do this? The word ‘uniform’ comes from the Latin ‘uni’ meaning ‘one’ and ‘formis’ meaning ‘form’. The word literally means ‘having the same form’; in other words, people wearing a uniform look similar; they look as if they have the same form or appearance. As for the implements that children use to write, ‘pen’ comes from the Latin ‘penna’ meaning ‘feather’. In the old days, feathers or quills as they were called then, were used to write. Whenever the tip became blunt, a small knife called the ‘pen knife’ was used to sharpen it.

Finally, for the tailpiece. The pencil or ‘pincel’ in French meaning ‘little tail’ was originally an artist’s paint brush which was used for writing.

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

In teaching and learning, questions are a regularly used tool… Teachers use ‘Why’ questions with children as young as 5 years. But what do we want to teach the children through these questions?

In most classrooms today, children are given the answers to standard questions and are made to learn (read memorise) the answer. For a question like ‘Why do we have a bath every day?”, the teacher might give children the answer , ‘We have a bath to keep ourselves clean and tidy and stay healthy’. The child passively accepts and memorises this and reproduces it when asked, either orally or in writing. Now for this child an answer that says, ‘We have a bath to stay fresh’ is not valid because it has not been handed down from the teacher – the authority for knowledge. So one has killed an opportunity for the child to think on her own and decide, on the merit of what is said whether the response is valid or not. Worse still we are conveying to the child that there is just one valid reason for having a bath and that any other reason cannot exist or is unacceptable.

Questions like why we have a bath daily don’t have one right answer; of course any answer also may not be right. But there can be many reasons for one to have a bath. By giving a standard answer to the child to memorise; at best the child is learning a few spellings. The child is also learning that only what the teacher gives is right, and there is only one correct answer to a question and that they can’t with the knowledge they have express their own ideas – they need to depend on the teacher to hand them the right answer. Or that there may be many reasons, but in school this is what ought to be said/written. Is this what we want the child to learn?

Encouraging children to think and write their own answers expands the learning possibilities. For one, they are thinking on their own, rather than passively expecting an adult to give them THE ONE RIGHT ANSWER. Then they are expressing on their own, which means that they are learning to use their vocabulary and their knowledge of sentence construction to make meaning and give expression. What can be more exciting for a learner than to know that she is able to make use of what she has learnt!! And what is written is HER OWN CREATION – it helps the child believe in her ability to think, reason and use her knowledge to give expression to her idea. That is a very important learning. Even a spelling like ‘stadi’ (for study) – which is so obviously wrong, when looked at carefully might actually suggest progress for a child who has just started learning the sounds of letters, because ‘stadi’ is a perfectly legitimate phonic construction! The child has understood the phonic logic, now she only has to learn that the English language has its idiosyncrasies.

Responses from children can give a rich insight into their thinking worlds to the teacher. These responses can become the starting point for a discussion on the topic. Listening to answers from others and reasoning about their validity allows the child to think beyond her initial answer and broadens her own understanding of the concept/issue. After the discussion, the teacher can now ask the children to rewrite their answers. This kind of a participative exercise enriches learning.

Learning to think for oneself, learning to give expression to one’s own idea and appreciating that there can be many possible valid responses to a given question are more valuable learning objectives than presenting well-memorised, perfect-looking sentences.

The author works with Centre for Learning, Secunderabad. He can be reached at knramgopal@yahoo.com.

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