“Surely, education has no meaning unless it helps you to understand the vast expanse of life with all its subtleties; with its extraordinary beauty, its sorrows and its joys.” – Jiddu Krishnamurti

The image of a proud little boy or girl taking off for school, excited to distraction is maybe something that only plays out on a Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan advertisement. The Tabula Rasa approach to education doesn’t do for today’s generation of parents who will do anything to make sure their children get what they see as a much-needed edge to succeed in life.

With the spread of the corporate franchise preschools in urban India over the past decade, the notion of preprimary education in India has been fundamentally revamped. A fully developed curriculum, lesson plans, organized activity are all factored into the system, gearing towards preparing the child with a sound cognitive base for school.

‘Learning Readiness’ is the first of the three laws of learning developed by the renowned American educational psychologist Edward Thorndike. It is a simplistic concept that ‘individuals learn best when they are physically, mentally and emotionally ready to learn, and they do not learn well if they see no reason for learning.’ Although this concept can be applied to human learning at any stage, it is particularly significant for the 0-7 age group because any experience during this impressionable age has a long-term effect.

Manju Shetty, an education consultant at Chennai says that if we initiate learning before children are ready, they may learn and perform. But by the time they come to class four when fractions are introduced, they will be saturated and lethargic. In other words, they become “schooled” in performing certain operations but do not truly “learn” in the deeper sense of the term.

The late Prof. N Sankaran Nayar, eminent educationist and psychologist who contributed to the first authoritative nursery syllabus in Kerala back in 1963, says in his book The Concept and Practice of Preschool Education that readiness has two components – maturation and experience. While the former refers to the physical aspect (the child’s hand becoming strong enough to use a pencil), the latter refers to a background of related experiences. It is in providing the child with more experiences that preprimary education can contribute in ‘readying’ them for formal learning at primary school. Maturation, on the other, hand must progress at its own pace and cannot be forced.

Preprimary education has two phases in today’s Indian context – playschool and nursery (also known as kindergarten). Two years of kindergarten (German, means children’s garden) has been in vogue for some time now and it has almost become the first phase of compulsory education these days. While the notion of preschool has been around for over three decades in the country its apparent importance has increased in the recent years. Understandably, there is some confusion between the terms “preschool” and “playschool” because one refers to a phase of education while the other refers to the approach taken within education.

The huge increase in advertising for preschools and nurseries only leads to further confusion: are these spaces where children get together to play and be cared for in the absence of parents, or are they spaces where they are “readied” for formal school? Where the early preschools, slightly upgraded day care centres, were all about comfort and care, the newer ones focus on social and intellectual development – and therefore evince a greater interest in “method”.

Mr. J Joseph, Managing Director of Sydney Montessori Schools based in Kerala, says, “I wanted to change the system of leaving children to under qualified people. Ayahs with minimal educational qualification are not equipped with the resources to provide a child during this important phase.”

Joseph started Sydney with one student in a small town called Kottayam. The main challenge he faced was parents’ hesitation to pay fees of over a thousand rupees per month, especially since an older institution in the neighbourhood, run by nuns, was charging only a quarter of it. “We don’t mind spending lakhs on making our children engineers and doctors, but what is the point if we have ignored the most important phase of their lives?” he asks.

But word of mouth spread faster than he expected and within no time, Sydney became famous for the difference it was making. It now has six branches in three districts in central Kerala.

However, Joseph himself clarifies that although the school focuses on all round development of the child, character formation and finding their true potential, it does not completely follow the Montessori system as the name suggests. “There isn’t the right kind of environment for that in Kerala. It will be useful only if the child can carry on with it during primary education and upwards,” he says.

It is known that Montessori schools differ in their interpretation and practical application across the world because of the ambiguity in Maria Montessori’s work in describing the method itself; she focused more on the effects of the method.

Take Anuradha Rao’s case, for instance. With the experience of running the Naval Wives Welfare Association playschool in Visakhapatanam, she started one at her house in Hyderabad after her husband’s retirement. She wanted to take it to the next level and attended a Montessori training program at Basheerbagh, Hyderabad. “The classes went fine, but during a two week teaching practice session at a school, I saw multiple instances where the inner urges of children were being disregarded. The original Montessori style is about letting the child be. I couldn’t agree and so I quit.”

The Waldorf method developed by the Australian philosopher Rudolph Steiner has also gained niche popularity in Indian schools recently. Based on a more humanistic pedagogy, the Waldorf style is different from mainstream teaching methods. Manju, who also has 13 years of experience as a kindergarten teacher at Shloka Waldorf School in Hyderabad says, “We use the playway method. Our play materials and even the classroom ambience is the same in all countries. But we follow what is called the rhythm of the child – which starts with their heartbeat,” she says.

At Euro Kids, a leading preschool chain in India, a combination of playway method and Montessori style is put to use. Asha Swaminathan, Academic Coordinator for the Kerala territory, says: “Our philosophy is based on this idiom – I hear, I forget; I see, I remember; I do, I understand. So instead of just saying A for Apple, we bring an apple to the class, make them smell, touch, peel, cut and eat. All senses are at work that way.”

However, preschool institutions are not all about fun and play. Teachers often encounter challenges while working with children from dysfunctional, unhappy homes or with a history of abuse. Manju speaks of a senior kindergarten student in her charge who was grappling with an incident of attempted molestation at a park. “Fortunately, nothing happened. But the child became so clamped. I requested the parents to give her one more year in kindergarten. They are so grateful for that one year now. She has forgotten it (the episode) completely.”

Joseph remembers having a four year old who was so tactfully sexually abused by her uncle that she developed a sexual interest. The parents had not communicated this, but her behaviour with older boys upped the teachers’ antennae. The parents, however, later confessed that they sent her to Sydney just so that she could get over it.

Parents are a problem!
Anuradha, who runs a non formal playschool (just three hours everyday), says she has had parents who were worried about their children not knowing the alphabet and numbers 1-20 while other kids did.

Manju confesses that the biggest challenge in her career has been dealing with parents, not children. “They should understand that children are like our five fingers, all are different but each one is indispensable. There is no point in comparing them.” But she herself says that ‘the parents who trouble you a lot are the genuine ones.’ That is precisely why Waldorf gives parents the opportunity to participate in the class for a day and watch their kid learn.

Euro Kids arranges a parent orientation program at the outset itself to avoid such ‘a conflict of interest.’ “We make it clear to parents what we will be doing and what the expectations from them are. They are equal contributors in their child’s development,” says Asha.

Joseph and his wife Jasmine have had a tough time dealing with indifferent parents. The attitude is that ‘we pay you and you are supposed to do this.’ There have been cases when the kids are bathed and sent home and they return the next morning without even brushing. Some parents even touch teachers the wrong way while handing over the child. Some come drunk to school to drop children. And most of them are completely averse to feedback as well.

But there are also parents like Jyothi Rao, whose daughter has gone to Anuradha’s school as well as Euro Kids in Kukatpally, Hyderabad. She can list the learning of her child in each place with the changes in her behaviour; such is the level of involvement!

An important factor to keep in mind here is that the nursery school is not a substitute but an extension of the home. Neither home nor school can take care of all needs and they cannot function in isolation as well. A coordinated approach working at an individual plane (parent visiting school and teacher visiting home) and a collective plane (parent teacher meetings to discuss common problems) is required. Of course, basic manners are not negotiable.

Teachers don’t just teach…
In many of these institutions, teachers have the freedom and responsibility to choose the school activities based on children’s interest and pace. They ‘prepare an environment’, as Maria Montessori puts it, where children do not have to be forced with either the carrot or the stick to learn.

Equating teaching with discipline gets a strict negative nod. Regimentation is a serious hazard to mental and emotional health of children at this age; what they need is a free permissive atmosphere where free activity is not only tolerated but encouraged. As Swami Vivekananda ardently advocates, teachers should help them manifest the perfection they already have in them.

The Waldorf system calls their teachers ‘facilitators.’ “We talk very little unlike in other schools. If a child asks why the sky is blue, we don’t give a readymade answer. We ask back, ah, why is it blue? This will make him observe and experience by himself that the sky changes colour as the day progresses,” Manju explains.

At Sydney, teachers are given special training to understand that it is a re-rooting process for children, their first exposure to a world outside home, which calls for a lot of care. One teacher is assigned to each kid during the time of joining and it is her duty to see that the child is comfortable being away from parents and home.

Euro Kids employs a ‘reporting and inspection system’ to deal with the problem of widespread franchisees. Each school has to call the territory Academic Coordinator every day and give a report. Additionally, monthly inspections are arranged. Coordinators across the country meet once in four months to discuss feedback from teachers across the board and to amend the curriculum accordingly.

Getting the right applicants is a challenge faced by all these schools. Most schools consider good English communication skills and graduation a must and mothers are preferred. But an attitude problem among educated people in teaching at preprimary level is the biggest deterrent. ‘I did not do my post graduation to teach at a nursery’ is a statement that is often heard. What many teachers do not realize is that this is the place where he or she can make maximum difference to a child’s life.

Of course, the attitude problem has a lot to do with the poor salary scale of playschool and kindergarten teachers. At Sydney, every teacher gets a basic salary of Rs.5000 plus performance based bonus. Joseph says he knows many schools that are run with teachers who have just passed plus two and have undergone nursery teaching training and are paid as low as Rs.1000. Sister Nirmal, Principal of St. Lukes Nursery School, Gandhinagar says that all three teachers in her school have only completed these courses.

While enhanced pay scales will go a long way in attracting a better talent pool, a genuine interest in teaching young children is important for those who wish to make a career in it. Asha once had a post graduate who had come for the post of Counsellor, but the vacancy was for teaching. “She was averse to the idea, but I requested her to be with us for a month and see how things go. She loves her job today.” If that’s not enough, she vouches for it herself – “I have 100% job satisfaction.”

The early years of a child’s life must be handled with care and consideration – in terms of providing the right physical and emotional environment, and in terms of having the right kind of people around the child. While a warm and nurturing home may be the best place for a child to take early lessons for life, the space provided by a preschool can offer a valuable addition to those lessons—through peer interaction and play, which is after all, a child’s work.

Parent’s view

My son is four years old now and goes to a preschool that both he and I are very happy with. A couple of years ago when my son turned two I started thinking about a school to send him to. Actually I was forced to think about the kind of school I wanted my son to go to. At the time, a couple I know who have a child six months younger than my own was actively looking for a school for their daughter. I said to myself, wow, if at 18 months they want their child to go to school then at 24 months my son certainly can’t be sitting at home! Why hadn’t I thought of him going to school until then? Was I not being a responsible parent? I mean, didn’t I start school when I was four? Only then did I notice the advertisements of preschools along the route I take to work. And there were at least 20 schools staring down at me. Each claimed to have a USP. One claimed to be a preschool and a day care centre so I needn’t worry about my child when I was away at work. Another claimed that they would guide my child into becoming a smart kid so that he succeeded wherever he went. A third said they were ‘the modern’ preschool. A fourth even offered me an early bird discount! How was I to choose? I went to a couple of these schools. The schools welcomed me, showed me around, and patiently answered my questions. I thought they were nice schools but I wasn’t really impressed. What was I looking for?

Well, for starters I wanted a school that wasn’t too far from home. At his age I didn’t want my son traveling 20 kilometers to school everyday!
I wanted a school that was an extension of his home.
A school that was as protective of him as I was.
A school that cared and looked after his needs as I did.
A school that assigned not more than 15 kids to a teacher.
A school that had patient, sensitive and understanding teachers.
A school that did not insist on learning the alphabet or numbers at age three (when my son would eventually start going to school.)
A school that did not have exams at the end of the year that he would have to sit through to move to the next class.
A school that did not prescribe a uniform.
A school that had a nice playground and airy classrooms.
A school that my son would be happy and eager to go to everyday.

While the schools I surveyed had some of the factors I was looking for none had them all. After a few tense months however I found just the school I wanted to send my son to. This is his second year at this school and I am content. Well at least for now… until I begin the search all over again for a primary school.

Shalini

Being a preschool teacher

Preschool is essentially a place of training, where children learn skills that they will need when they begin school. Handling children at this level requires knowledge, aptitude and skill – for it entails developing a range of skill sets in children, from toilet training to motor skills, from understanding of basic concepts that one needs to negotiate the immediate environment to social skills, language skills like listening and speaking, an ability to pay attention for specified periods of time, an ability to reason, and more. This is a huge responsibility – and in order to help children develop all of this successfully, the preschool teacher needs to be remarkably skilled herself.

What are the qualities that the preschool teacher should have? One group of schools calls its preschool teachers “mother teachers”: they believe that, first and foremost, the teacher must have a deep love for and a willingness to engage with children. I can’t but agree with them – untiring devotion and patience with children, the willingness to play, sing, dance or otherwise engage with them, and work with their hands and get them dirty, the ability to smile joyfully and take pride in children and their work, no matter how “imperfect” – these are pre-requisites.

The teacher must also have a working knowledge of child development, both physical and psychological. Knowing the developmental milestones is important in organizing activities that help train rather than strain the child, particularly where motor skills are concerned. What, for example, is the right age to get a child to use a pencil? How should a left-handed child be trained to write? A preschool teacher must be aware of such matters. Knowing the developmental milestones can be crucial in spotting nascent disabilities as well.

Knowledge of at least two local languages (and English where necessary), with a good grammatical base and a large vocabulary of words in each is essential. The words that a child will need in her day to day life, from body parts to things in the environment to action words – all these the teacher must be familiar with. She must also be resourceful, observant and agile, knowing how to establish and maintain discipline. She must pay attention to the diet of the child, ensuring that it is nutritious.

Last but not least, an ability to analyze and discuss the child’s issues with the parents is also important.

Sheel

Going with the flow…

While the popular opinion today is that preschool is a necessary step in children’s education, there are those who think otherwise. Many educationists have demanded that children be left to themselves and allowed to grow in their own natural way like plants. The 18th century writer Jean Jacquez Rousseau wrote his fiction work Emile to show sophisticated European society of that era, an alternative pattern of education. His philosophy was naturalistic and in terms of methodology, he was a great advocate of self teaching.

When is a child ready for preschool?

While most parents enroll children in preschool when they turn two, age is not always the most definitive indicator to deem them ready. If a child is not properly toilet trained, has not learned to speak just yet, and has difficulty with engaging his/her time in any kind of activity for short durations of time (10 minutes), pushing them into preschool without preparing them for it not only causes stress for the child, but also makes it difficult for him/her to adjust to a new setting.

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Ardra has a Masters in Communication from the SN School of Arts and Communication, University of Hyderabad. She is a freelance writer and avid blogger. She can be reached at ardramaanasam@gmail.com.
Deepti has a Masters in Communication from the SN School of Arts and Communication, University of Hyderabad. She can be reached at deeptibharthur@gmail.com.

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The end of the year may mark several kinds of transitions for children and parents: from one class to the next, from one level of schooling to the next, sometimes one town to another. It’s a time when we all evaluate our experience and see if this is what we want to continue with. Parents have a tough time choosing the right school with what they may see as the right curriculum for their children. But what about the teachers? How does a teacher go about choosing his/her place of work and deciding to stay with this choice year after year? Does curriculum figure in their criteria? What does the curriculum mean to a teacher? Why do some teachers prefer one curriculum over another?

In view of the curricular changes framed in the National Curriculum Framework (NCF) of 2005 and the systemic and structural changes outlined in the Right to Education Act of 2009, it is important to ask what curriculum formation and change mean to various stakeholders, especially teachers who bear the responsibility of ensuring that the expected outcomes are achieved.

Broadly defined, curriculum is the complete set of taught material in a school system. It is prescriptive (as opposed to the ‘descriptive’ syllabus, which is the outline of topics covered. If the curriculum prescribes the objectives of the system, the syllabus describes the means to achieve them). Jane Sahi of SITA school, in Karnataka says, “Curriculum comes from a Latin word which means the course of a chariot race. However, curriculum has come to mean much more than a prescribed one track race and calls for a search for an understanding that gives meaning to education that is both functional and ethical”. Curriculum as a guiding document helps teachers in understanding standards that students need to achieve at the end of a developmental stage. Vimala Nandakumar, an educationist based in Mumbai, explains, “The curriculum document will indicate “what” to teach, ”how” the curriculum is to be taught and help in checking “whether” the curriculum is taught as per the document”.

“A curriculum gives a guideline of what the salient learning points are and it is good for a teacher to have the framework to work with,” says Dr. Yasmin Jayathritha, a teacher at Centre for Learning, Bangalore.

Over the years, ‘curriculum’ has meant different things to different educationists. Some simply equate curriculum to the syllabus that is to be transmitted in the class. “A syllabus gives a more focused outline for particular subjects. It can’t be equated, because a curriculum is for a course but a syllabus is for a subject,” says Dr. Yasmin Jayathritha. The curriculum is the superset and syllabus is the subset of curriculum. “The syllabus is the content, the list of topics/concepts to be taught, whereas the curriculum is a consideration of the objectives, the content, methods chosen to achieve those objectives. It could/should contain a consideration of the kind of assessment one will use to check progress,” says Dr. Gurveen Kaur of Centre for Learning, Hyderabad.

“Curriculum is developed keeping in mind the standards students should achieve from well- researched best practices. Curriculum is designed so that the teaching and testing are aligned with the standards set for each developmental stage,” adds Vimala Nandakumar. Some see it as an end-product, which is to be achieved through a prescribed plan with pre-set objectives. For others, it is the interaction between ‘knowledge’, students and teachers.

A curriculum can be a teacher’s friend or an enemy depending on how the teacher plans to use it. “The curriculum can be a straight-jacket or a crutch or a spring-board. For a teacher the curriculum stops being stifling if she understands what it is meant to achieve. But most use it, often badly, as a crutch because they make no effort to engage with it or understand what it hopes to achieve. Once a teacher understands that, she can use it or work around it to achieve the same ends,” says Dr. Gurveen Kaur.

CBSE, ICSE and the various state boards are the main curricular frameworks that are predominant in India but the focus is different for each of them. Pointing out the differences in curricula, Vimala Nandakumar says, “For example the Maharashtra SSC boasts of thoroughness in grammar and basics of mathematics and science. CBSE focuses more on high standards of Hindi, communication skills as far as English Language is concerned and a diluted version of science as compared to earlier days. ICSE, on the other hand, emphasizes on English Language and English literature, high levels of Hindi, mathematics and science.

“The content, i.e., the topics listed – in these three syllabi (SSC, CBSE and ICSE) in science, socials and math- is more or less the same according to me. In socials, one difference is that the SSC syllabus has more information on the state – which is the point and as it should be – whereas the other two do not have a state-specific bias. Yet there are significant differences,” adds Dr. Gurveen Kaur.

While the language texts in SSC are perceived as being of lower quality, ICSE and CBSE are better printed with illustrations and plenty of exercises. “ICSE is more challenging, CBSE much improved but slightly less loaded, so more flexible. But in terms of what a curriculum can do to inform the perspective of a child/student, I think, right now the CBSE texts are worth adopting – particularly in socials. There is another Board – The NIOS (National Institute Of open Schooling). While the syllabus is bare-bones, it is quite well-done. It has the essentials to acquaint one with the necessary information, in simple language and yet doesn’t over-burden with facts and figures,” adds Dr Kaur.

While some schools are beginning to open up to new curricula (such as the IGCSE or IB) and methods of teaching, some major changes are being made to the ways in which the existing curricula are implemented, to incorporate new trends and techniques and do away with those that have not worked.

Anjali Razdan, Principal, Indus World School, notes some big changes in the CBSE curriculum, as framed in NCF 2005, highlighting the grading system.

“If you ask me what difference the curriculum makes to a teacher, I must say not much. I have taught in ICSE and CBSE curricula and I don’t see much of a difference in the core concepts. It’s the approach that is different. 2+2 can only be 4 and not something else,” she notes wryly.

Commenting on the curriculum’s impact on a teacher’s choices, she says, “In the earlier days it was the love for teaching that made people take up teaching as a career. Now it is as good or bad as any other profession. Remuneration is a big draw, not so much the curriculum. Teachers also look at the environment and the added benefits that the school might give”.

Some believe that the content might remain the same for each class, the approach is different in different curricula. That’s where the devil is – in the approach. How you teach a simple multiplication table makes or breaks the child’s future in mathematics. Others believe that the curriculum adopted is not as important as are the school environment and the teachers’ ways of dealing with children and learning.

I think most curricula world over are very similar since the learning requirements for particular age groups are the same. I believe Germany has a lot of vocational training in their curriculum for 16 year olds. There may be minor differences in the Indian curricula but I am not sure there are major differences,” says Dr. Yasmin Jayathritha.

“Whatever the train of thought is, a strong and continuous orientation (training) is critical,” adds Anjali Razdan. “The ICSE board has orientation programs for teachers at the beginning of the academic year, whereas the CBSE board has a continuous orientation program”.

What about someone who is planning to take up teaching as a career? Does the curriculum draw them to teaching? “Yes it does”, says Anjali Sharma of Gitanjali Devashray, “I took up teaching about three years ago and I wanted to get into a CBSE school because I heard many positive things about this curriculum from friends and acquaintances”.

For some the adventure lies in learning something new and imparting that learning to their students. Susmita Chervathoor of Chirec School believes that, “Teachers should constantly update their skills, be open to change and try out new things. This will eventually help them when there are systemic changes in the curriculum. For example, the CBSE curriculum is undergoing so many changes that one should be adept enough to cope with such changes”. Some boards offer the teacher greater scope for experimentation and learning while others tend to be a bit more static. There is a certain “fit” that teachers look for in terms of the teaching approaches demanded by a particular curriculum and their own style of teaching.

So what makes teachers prefer a curriculum over others? “Teachers generally opt for a certain curriculum because of their own background as they have been taught in the same curriculum. One must seek opportunities to learn new things even changing curricula,” says Susmita Chervathoor. For some the passion for teaching seems to have been enough to take up the profession. Rashmi Bali of Jain International School who has taught in four different curricula SSC, ICSE, CBSE and IB says, “When I began my career as a teacher the curriculum did not really matter. But as I grew in the teaching profession and learnt new things the curriculum started to make a difference. However teaching is all about innovativeness and the way to teach ultimately matters more than the curriculum you are following”. “A teacher who has taught in different boards will be a great asset to an institution. The reason being she/he could evolve a curriculum which will integrate the plus points of various boards,” adds Vimala Nandakumar.

For individuals who are in the field of education but are not teachers it’s a different story. “Curriculum starts making a difference to teachers only when they are teaching in middle or higher classes and not in the lower classes”, says Rajika Dhiren of Greenwood school that has classes till the 4th standard. She also adds that, “While hiring teachers, school managements in India prefer teachers who have taught in the CBSE and ICSE curricula as their communication skills are better than the others”.

Gita Krishnan of Gitanjali school who counsels both teachers and students says, “Planning and implementation are two major issues that I have to constantly guide teachers for. The curriculum is not really the issue. Time management and balancing activities in any curriculum are also important factors. Continuous training for teachers must be made mandatory by all school managements irrespective of the curricula, only then can teachers be better at what they are”.

In recent times, schools have shown the promise of a different schooling experience from the conventional systems. New curricula like the International Baccalaureate and systems like Waldorf have also been gaining momentum in the recent past. How are they different? Jyotsna of Sloka school which follows the Waldorf system till the eighth standard and CBSE in the ninth and tenth says, “The lessons in a Waldorf system are not structured like the conventional system. Lessons are taught in the form of stories. They are a powerful medium that stay in children’s memories forever, that is what they remember and each story incorporates a certain level of learning. These stories are again different for different classes. By the time they finish eighth standard they are well equipped to take up any curriculum”.

The International Baccalaureate system is also gaining popularity in India, albeit among an elite minority. There are about 65 IB world schools in the country. Orchids International based at Hyderabad has both International Baccalaureate and CBSE curricula. Uma Bala of Orchids International schools says, “We have the IB curriculum till the sixth standard and from the sixth the CBSE curriculum as parents start getting worried when their children reach higher classes; they want them to be ready for competitive exams after tenth”.

The Montessori method of teaching developed by Dr. Maria Montessori has been around in India for quite some time now but this method is primarily applied to young children only. Likewise the Rishi Valley schools which are based on Jiddu Krishnamurthy’s philosophy claim to provide a flexible curriculum with affiliation to the ICSE Board.

With new curricula being introduced in India and changes being made in the existing ones, new challenges are likely to come up. “What is important for teachers is to know before-hand what a particular curriculum offers in terms of space to try out new things and resources and then decide on which curriculum he/she is most comfortable with”, says Prasuna Balantrapu, an English language teacher based in Vijayawada. Dr. Gurveen Kaur says, “I think teachers must engage with the curriculum to understand what it hopes to achieve and not just accept it as matter to be taught. Once they understand what it hopes to achieve, they will have more control and autonomy in planning their classes – which makes the process much more fun and satisfying for the teacher than blind rule following. The teachers should try and see how it differs from another curriculum”.

Some teachers seem to have a definite preference for a specific curriculum and for some it is not such a big deal. “Changes in the recent guidelines of the Curriculum Framework of the NCERT have opened up many possibilities in innovative and creative ways of teaching. However textbooks and guidelines in reshaping curriculum will only come to life through the active engagement of teachers who are conscious and aware of what they are doing”, says Jane Sahi.

At the best of times, many of us as teachers agonize over passing judgment on a student’s work in the form of marks. In a history essay, what makes one student get 72 and another 76? What does the 4 mark difference signify in terms of quality? Can quality and understanding be measured in numerical terms? And what of letter grades? Are they any better? Can we define the qualitative – and quantitative – difference between an A and a B? These and many other questions may assail us as we make the move from marks to grades.

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE)’s new mandate on continuous and comprehensive evaluation requiring schools to make a shift from marks to grades is meeting with a mixed response. While on the one hand, there is relief and even celebration, there’s uncertainty and skepticism on the other. We spoke with a few people to get a sense of how the change is being received.

“It is a child-friendly system. Most of us are welcoming the move, especially in the interests of children who are not able to cope. For them, it is a big burden off their head,” says Nandita Khanna, Head of Nalanda Public School, a CBSE school in Mumbai.

Nandita is alluding to the anxiety associated with examination results. Truly, the report card is an all-too-real monster that represents absolute terror for many a child. Seema Taneja, who has been counselling and consulting with CBSE schools for over 18 years now, says, “One finds parents comparing even over half a mark. One hears things like – Why has my child scored less? Why did he get only 18 on 20? Where did he lose out? There is so much pressure.”

Grades are being seen as a healthier alternative to marks, because grades do not equate the child’s capability with a number that might provide an incomplete picture of the child’s attainment levels. Seema says, “Grading offers a broader spectrum of where you approximately lie. I hope that with grading, parents will shift their attention from knowing about their children’s marks to learning about their aptitudes and interests.”

Manju Gupta, Principal of Pallavi Model School, a CBSE school in Hyderabad, says, “When we look around, we see that people who are interested in a variety of activities do better than those who are only academically inclined. So it is unfair to base a child’s future on a three-hour performance.”

She adds, “Assessment needs to be holistic. The new system gives weightage to art, craft, music, dance and yoga. There is a feel good factor for children who are not academically brilliant. We are very happy about this.”

The CBSE’s new grading scheme will take into account a child’s participation in extra-curricular activities, life skills, attitudes and values, along with his or her performance in academic subjects. How one can award grades for ‘honesty’, ‘respect towards teachers’, ‘emotional skills’, ‘creative thinking’, ‘ability to handle criticism’ is something worth mulling over.

Manju remarks, “These things are ambiguous and intangible, so grading is definitely a problem area when it comes to these. The teacher needs to be very observant and objective. That is why there is an emphasis on keeping anecdotal records.”

“A teacher has to be very unbiased. She has to be able to respect opinions that are different from her own. For instance, one needs to sensitize teachers as to what constitutes ‘respect’ and ‘disrespect’ towards teachers, otherwise they may pick on certain students,” says Preeti Sharma, who currently teaches English to IGCSE students at the Aditya Birla World Academy, Mumbai but has taught in CBSE schools for four years before her current job.

Seema feels that schools will have “teething problems” regarding this issue, but one must accept that “the idea of bringing in non-academic areas of development and growth into grading is essentially a good one.” She adds, “All teachers will have to sit together and give their inputs. This will take care of the subjective element involved in grading life skills, creativity, etc.”

Annamma Cherian, a teacher at Ordnance Clothing Factory School, a CBSE school in Chennai, observes, “The CBSE grading system has some safeguards. One single teacher cannot make decisions about a child based on her own discretion. She has to sit with a group of teachers, listen to what they have to say, and then the grade is given.”

Sure, one can produce a list of indicators that attempt to place controls on teachers’ subjectivity, or even ensure grading by multiple teachers. However, is it even desirable to grade all of these things in the first place, and artificially produce normative behaviour? Would such grading create another kind of pressure – the pressure to be seen as a well-behaved, law-abiding, goody-two-shoes student, for without it one’s grade sheet would make a sorry picture?

I am reminded of value education and moral science classes in school, where we wrote about values in daintily decorated books with pictures of Mother Teresa, Mahatma Gandhi et al. Teachers were content to see pages filled with quotable quotes, newspaper clippings, and high-sounding virtuous lines of prose or poetry. How can one ensure that grades reward values-in-practice, and not values-in-lip-service? This issue is of course not unique to grades but affects assessment standards and practice in general.

Preeti has a suggestion. “In the IGCSE board, when we do research work, we get our students started on the American Psychological Association (APA) system right from Grade 6. We tell our children that it is okay to pick information from the Internet, but they need to provide references for whatever they pick. They cannot pass off somebody else’s work as their own, because that would be plagiarism. That they are able to incorporate from other sources shows that they have understood well. This is one aspect of honesty that can be looked at.”

The switch from grades to marks necessitates a change in teachers’ attitudes as well as administrative procedures. And this change can be unsettling on several counts – the subjectivity involved in awarding a grade, the maintenance of elaborate records, working with colleagues to mutually decide upon a grade, giving up the idea of using a number/mark to sum up a child’s performance, and the sudden increase in workload. Any teacher training programmes that seek to initiate teachers into the new grading system must take these issues into consideration.

Preeti says, “Practically every CBSE school has 45 to 55 children per class. The strength of my IGCSE classes is 25, so I know each and every kid personally. With 55 kids and correction and administrative duties, it is going to be a mammoth task for CBSE school teachers to manage the increased workload unless CBSE is ready to introduce a co-teacher in each class.”

While one can make all possible attempts to ensure smooth sailing into a new system, as is the case with everything new that is introduced, there are bound to be doubts and questions. Even resentment. Among teachers, parents or even students.

Nandita says, “Children and parents are very concerned because the grading system is not followed across all boards. They are not sure how grades will work when they want to get admission to colleges that have cut-off percentages.”

Annamma says, “Children who take their studies seriously and do extremely well feel let down by the new system. The student scoring 91 and the student scoring 99 will both get an A plus. Even parents are worried that their kids might be at a disadvantage. Moreover, in Tamil Nadu, the state board students are given very high marks. There is a disparity between them and the CBSE students. With the introduction of the grading system, the situation will get worse. There is a lot of frustration among the students.”

These are legitimate concerns, and the sharing of them ought to be encouraged. It is only through open discussion that all stakeholders will get a fair chance to express where they are coming from, and to negotiate a new system in a healthy manner.

Manju, who has been at the receiving end of such concerns, shares her experience. “Our school has been doing a nine-point relative grading since the last four years, and we are now switching to the absolute grading under the CBSE’s directives. When we introduced the grading system four years ago, there were a lot of issues. It took a little while to convince parents, but we knew that they would eventually see light at the end of the tunnel.”

An important question that might get lost in all this discussion is: Will grading really do away with the hierarchies that we create among children on the basis of their performance? Seema says, “A hierarchy will be there. We can only work towards diffusing it. As you age, your mind becomes more capable with respect to handling stress in a constructive manner. You can’t do away with competition. You can just postpone it. Otherwise, how will the world work?”

Ah, there!

___________________________________________________
References:
http://www.indiaedunews.net/Today/Grade_sheets_and_no_mark_sheets_for_CBSE_class_X_10032/
http://beta.thehindu.com/education/school/article96220.ece
http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/traditional-report-card-turns-over-a-new-leaf/576319/
http://beta.thehindu.com/search/simple.do;jsessionid=E869A909BB2516F505E959597AD2953B.route04

The author is pursuing an M.Phil. in English Language Education. He runs People in Education, an online group connecting people and sharing resources. He can be reached at chintangirishmodi@gmail.com.

The Teacher Plus Photography Contest drew an overwhelming response, with more than 100 entries flooding our mailbox. The contest, open to all amateur photographers and held for the first time in the history of Teacher Plus, had respondents from all over the country.

Congratulations to all those who participated and who made this a truly satisfying experience for all of us at Teacher Plus.

We congratulate the First and Second Prize winners.Since the choice was tough, there are two First Prize winners, and three Second Prize winners. Lakshmi Prabala and Chandrasekhar win the First Prize, a cash award of Rs. 1500 each, while Archana Murthy, Sunita Pijwala and Bharat Thakur take home the Second Prize, a cash award of Rs. 750 each.

The contest was announced in September 2009 and participants were given a time-frame of nearly four months to decide on their subject. Though the initial response was slow, as the deadline drew nearer, the pace quickened and by December, Teacher Plus received entries that left the staff amazed.

All good photographs stir up emotions and tell stories. From Archana Murthy’s creative ‘Envisioning the Future’ to Sunita Pijwala’s dramatic picture of school children in a flooded classroom, to Rashmi Virendra’s gentle visual of children trying to draw a picture of a dog – all caught our attention. There were many others too, which deserve a special mention: Amit Kohli, Mahesh Kumar Basedia, Bharat Thakur, Roma and others.

The two judges, PV Sivakumar, Staff Photograher, The Hindu, and Sadhana Ramchander, writer and editor, both based in Hyderabad, found the evaluation process difficult because they had to choose between a technically good picture and a picture that just could not be ignored. As they say, a picture is worth more than a thousand words.

All entries will be part of the Teacher Plus photo bank, and if published in the magazine, will receive credit and payment.

Prize winners will be intimated directly through email and telephone and their cash award will be sent to them in the form of a Demand Draft.

Second prize winners

Evaluating the Teacher Plus photo contest

Sadhana Ramchander

Evaluating creativity is a difficult and subjective process. The exercise to pick 10 photos from the ones submitted for the Teacher Plus Photography contest left me feeling dissatisfied because there were many, apart from the 10 I finally picked, which were good too. There was a conflict between choosing a technically good photo vis-a-vis a dramatic visual that did not score on sharpness or composition. I tried to choose ones that combined both these qualities, except one (children in a classroom filled with water) that was so dramatic, that technicalities did not matter.

The world of children in school is full of activity, learning and hope, and therefore, visually very interesting. Now that photography is so easy, I think all teachers should use their digital or phone cameras regularly, not only to capture candid shots, but also to use the photographs they take as part of their teaching process to better illustrate what they teach. The possibilities are immense. A picture is truly worth a thousand words. Maybe more.

Too good to be ignored

P V Sivakumar

MY IMPRESSIONS: Some pictures were great, showing creativity such as the one by Archana Murthy, some were too good to be ignored and hence had to be clubbed. Others were too obvious and several others routinely taken.

A good photograph is judged partly by the concept which it embodies, the revelation of the photographer’s point of view and partly the skill employed in the language of the final product – colour, light and shade, value, imagination and atmosphere. If any picture includes all these to the fullest degree (in comparison to other entries) it would be the prize winning photo in a given contest. Each picture is judged by its merits like how far the photographer set out on the theme and how much was accomplished.

Having said that it would be apt to give a few tips:
Each photo contest has special requirements about the pictures expected from participants. Before you start setting up your shot, make sure you are following the rules to the letter.

Use the rule of thirds
Placing your subject in the centre of the shot makes for a boring, predictable photograph. Imagine a tic-tac-toe board over the shot, and place your main subject where the lines intersect. When the picture is off-centre, it will look more interesting.

Let the subject fill the shot
A beginner’s mistake is to take a picture from too far away, including too much irrelevant background. For example, when taking pictures of people you don’t need to get your subject’s full body in the shot, focus on the face.

Avoid pictures from above
Shots that look down on your subject tend to feel small and distorted. Get down on the level of your subject for a closer, more intimate look.

Watch your lighting
Shadows or the glare from overly bright lights can destroy an otherwise perfect picture. Try taking pictures early in the morning, just before sunset, or on a cloudy day. Use the flash on bright days to fill in shadows on faces or irregular surfaces.

Take lots of photographs
Don’t settle for a single shot, take dozens of pictures and select the best to submit to the contest. Try photographing the same subject from different angles, in different lighting, and at different times of the day.

In a globalizing India, we need high-level multilingual skills, and a mother-tongue based multilingual education is the most effective way of achieving this multilingualism. This is the thesis of this essay.

In India, as everywhere in the world, children of linguistic minorities and indigenous peoples (STs) have a mother-tongue (MT or L1), and need at least one other non-MT, “livelihood language”. Besides, in post-Independence India, the medium of higher education has largely become English. Similarly, the higher reaches of the State’s bureaucracy and judiciary, as well as the private sector function (again, largely) in English. There is thus a high premium on acquiring this particular non-MT (an L2 or L3 for most Indians).

Non-functional schools
By and large, our educational system does not seem to be giving language skills even in the MT. PROBE 2006 (Public Report on Basic Education) reports that when researchers made unannounced visits to government schools in rural India, they found that in half the schools no teaching was happening on the day of the visit. Not surprising then that educational outcomes are so poor. ASER 2008 for rural India reports that only 56 per cent of Class 5 children can read a Class 2 textbook! That is, 44 per cent cannot even do that. And this is in the mother-tongue.

Notwithstanding the NCERT’s recommendations in its National Curriculum Framework, children of linguistic minorities and indigenous peoples continue to be taught in a non-MT. For them the situation is worse. Government statistics show an 82 per cent drop-out among ST students in Andhra Pradesh in the first 10 years of schooling; 73 per cent of ST women are illiterate.

Language impoverishment
UNESCO statistics show that in India, 13 per cent of the population of tertiary age are in higher education. (In China it is 22 per cent and in South Korea, 96 per cent of the population in that age group is in higher education.) These 13 per cent come out with woefully inadequate English. In the magazine Outlook (24 March 2008), one Human Resources executive reported to Anjali Puri that her company “rejects 92-93 per cent of applicants for poor English”. Another “puts the rejection rate for non-engineering graduates applying to the IT and IT-enabled sector, both in “voice” and “non-voice” roles, at 82-83 per cent, for lack of soft skills, including written and oral English. About 65-75 per cent of applying engineers are rejected for the same reasons.”

Indeed, as Puri observes, “The teachers make an important fundamental point, which I hear repeated, time and again, by teachers in other institutions. These problems have their roots in students being language-impoverished rather than just English-impoverished (that is, demonstrating a poor ability in regional languages too)”.

English-medium education
The manifest facts thus are of non-functioning schools, and to the extent that they do function, poor educational outcomes (in both the mother-tongue and in English). Trying to make up for these two deficiencies is the country’s burgeoning English-medium education system. The urgent desire for an English-medium education is quite evident (see Amit Kaushik’s essay in the ASER 2008 report) – especially among the traditionally marginalized groups in our deeply unequal society (see Alok Mukherjee’s recent study This Gift of English for one account). But the strategies proposed are mistaken – the fallacies of early and maximum exposure. Starting L2 as early as possible, and teaching as much of the curriculum as possible through the L2 does not result in effective or widespread L2 acquisition. At best, this results in “subtractive bilingualism”: an L2 acquired at the expense of L1. Most often, the result is simply language impoverishment; not being able to use either L1 or L2 adequately.

MT-education evidence
Worldwide there is overwhelming evidence for the effectiveness of MT-based education. One recent overview is the collection edited by Ajit Mohanty and his colleagues, Multilingual Education for Social Justice: Globalising the Local (2009). The essays in that volume abundantly confirm the following excerpts from the “Mother tongue first” issue of the development magazine id21 insights:

• “It is now well established that when a child begins learning in his or her first language that child is more likely to succeed academically and is better able to learn additional languages.”
• “The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, states that all children have the right to education (Article 28), and the right to learn and use the language of their family (Article 30).” (The 2007 Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples further supports this.)
• “A recent review of cost-benefit analyses for the 2006 African Education Ministers’ Meeting shows that education programmes starting with the mother tongue and gradually moving into other languages lead to cost savings compared to monolingual programmes. If they are more expensive at the beginning, costs decrease over time and savings (not paying for children to repeat years, for example) far exceed initial investment.”

Thus, educational theory, a rights-based approach, and returns on investment all indicate the desirability and effectiveness of an MT-based multilingual education. The Mohanty volume cites examples from Orissa, Nepal and Ethiopia of successful “additive” education programs to show both their pedagogic effectiveness, and to show that even relatively resource-poor education systems can deliver more just and inclusive education.

Here, then, is the education-package distilled from the research evidence by the World Esperanto Association, an organization for linguistic human rights:

The right of children to learn their mother tongue and continue their education using their mother tongue is not only important for their culture, it is essential for their psychological development. It has been shown in many large-scale studies in several countries that if indigenous and minority children have their education mainly using their own languages as the teaching language for the first 6-8 years (with good teaching of the dominant language as a second language, given by bilingual teachers), their general school achievement is better and they learn the dominant language better than if their teaching is through the medium of the dominant language. If they have only a year or two in the mother tongue and are then transferred to the dominant language, they may manage fairly well at the beginning, but from approximately fourth grade on, their progress starts slowing down and the gap between them and dominant language children continues to widen.

The author writes in English and Esperanto on multilingualism and education. His English blog Bolii is at http://bolii.blogspot.com. He can be reached at agiridhar.rao@gmail.com.

• Too many languages too soon?
• Overcoming the language barrier

What crisis?
There is now a growing scientific consensus that the impact of human activities on the natural environment is very significant and will have serious consequences for the planet. There is some difference of opinion on how soon this impact will be felt and how widespread it will be. But denial is no longer seen as an option. Most commentators will perhaps agree that the situation can, without exaggeration, be termed a “global crisis”.

What do we do? A recent article in the reputed scientific journal Nature proposes “…. a framework based on ‘planetary boundaries”. These boundaries define the safe operating space for humanity with respect to the Earth system and are associated with the planet’s bio-physical subsystems or processes.”* The authors define nine processes for which they believe it is necessary to define planetary boundaries: climate change; rate of bio-diversity loss (terrestrial and marine); interference with the nitrogen and phosphorous cycles; stratospheric ozone depletion; global fresh-water use; changes in land use; chemical pollution; and atmospheric aerosol loading. Many scientists hope that the discussions and negotiations at the international level like the Copenhagen Climate Summit scheduled for December 2009 will make significant progress in tackling at least some of the issues.

Whose crisis?
Unfortunately there are many difficulties ahead. I will consider three broad issues that arise and then explore the role and contribution of education in understanding and tackling the crisis.

Firstly, the crisis is the result of past actions. It is the result, mostly, of dramatic economic growth that began in the 18th century and subsequently accelerated. Most of this growth happened in what are today called the developed countries. These societies have acquired a level of material wealth, power and technological capability that has no historical parallel. And they, often through conquest and plunder, appropriated resources from all corners of the globe to fuel industrialization. Today, the poorer countries, (the “developing” countries) wish to emulate the success of the rich countries and improve their own socio-economic conditions.

This guarantees that the costs of the crisis will be paid, by and large, by future generations. Normal life will be disrupted through habitat loss and loss of livelihood. Poverty in many countries could increase. There is even the possibility of large scale loss of lives. There is the spectre that the poor and the innocent will suffer disproportionately for no fault of theirs.

The second difficulty arises in the nature of today’s world. We have a world of nations. Patriotism and ethnic loyalties run deep and are considered to be admirable qualities. Economic and political negotiations happen in the context of these loyalties. Most people forget that nations and ideas of nationhood arose relatively recently in world history. Governments try, tenaciously, to protect national interests and sustain hard-won power and prestige. Unfortunately, the environmental crisis is a truly global phenomenon that does not respect man-made boundaries. A ton of carbon dioxide emitted in Japan and an acre of Amazonian forest lost could have local effects but also consequences in Bangladesh and Tibet. We do not have, at the present moment, the ethical sensibilities and the political institutions necessary to address such a challenge.

The third difficulty is in understanding the role of personal change and private action in tackling such a crisis. How far should individuals try to alter their ways of life to meet the crisis – should we eat differently? Bathe differently? Drive less? Many argue, passionately, that personal initiatives are the only solution. Others, equally vehemently, argue that the changes needed are too wide in scope and need concerted action by governments. Many of those who argue for personal change also see the cause of the crisis differently. They see a moral failure in humanity – we allowed ourselves to be seduced by the glitter of the industrial age. We lost our connection to the earth, a sense of its beauty and its importance as life-giver. It is this connection that we need to regain.

The above three challenges can be summarised as follows. The environmental crisis is qualitatively a different challenge from what we have ever confronted. It calls for responses that lie outside traditional modes of thinking. We need to extend our sense of fairness and justice to all people and to future generations. To all life, perhaps. We need institutions that reflect this new ethical understanding. We need individual change and collective political action.

Education. Obviously?
The argument of the last section seems to indicate that we have to understand the causes and consequences of the crisis in all its complexity. We have to feel new ethical imperatives. And new ways of collective and individual action are needed. Isn’t this what education aims to do? Inform, provoke thought and inspire? In the next two sections I would like to explore the scope of educational responses. What are the possibilities? What is outside the reach of education?

A proposition
At a meeting in September held in Bangalore under the auspices of Wipro Applying Thought in Schools, a group of educators from all over the country examined this theme. As part of their discussions, they considered the following proposition:

“Education, broadly understood, is an important part of the response to the challenges that Indian society might face due to the environmental crisis. Educational initiatives have a crucial role to play in communicating the nature of the problem and in nurturing the critical intellectual, ethical and emotional capacities that are likely to help create a meaningful response.”

This proposition is worth examining in detail. The first sentence, while asserting the role of education in tackling the crisis, is careful to acknowledge that there might be constraints. For one, education, while a powerful social process, takes decades and even generations for its impact to be felt. Environmentalists feel that societies do not have that luxury. Therefore, we may have to turn to much more rapid political action. Political action can work in two ways. Firstly, it could tackle environmental problems directly. It could also set the stage for education by speeding up reform of the education system. Education in this context has to be understood in its widest sense. It is not merely school or university education that we are talking about. The educational process here involves all persons, of all ages, who learn. The point is worth emphasizing. The environmental crisis requires a multifaceted approach. Education is only one part.

What can education do?
Having warned the reader that we need to look at education broadly, I would like to use the rest of this essay to focus on school education. We should recognize immediately that ready-made tools and curricula equal to the task are not available. As the proposition points out, recognizing the problem is important, but not enough. As teachers, we are familiar with the phenomenon of “inert knowledge”. Students have a lot of information, but have a poor capacity to understand and apply the knowledge in meaningful ways.

So there is a lot to be done both at the level of policy and in the classroom. The educational policy makers need to realize that adding a new subject called “environmental science” or something similar is at best a small first step. We need flexible frameworks (not rigid and prescriptive lists) that allow teachers to engage the students in interesting ways. We need teachers interested enough and knowledgeable enough to do this. The syllabus needs to be responsive to local issues and has to accommodate local knowledge. For example, teachers and students in rural Rajastan will have to understand a different set of local environmental challenges compared to those in urban Kolkata. So the focus of the curriculum has to shift in significant ways. A sceptic may argue that this has to be done anyway regardless of the environmental crisis. Yes, true. But the stakes just got raised.

What about the classroom? I argue that learning about the crisis and discovering responses to it has two important dimensions. Firstly, the student and the teacher need to understand the complexity and interconnectedness of the problems. Students in sugarcane growing districts of Maharashtra must understand the potential impact of changes in monsoon patterns and ground water use on their livelihood. How would global fossil fuel use induce melting of the glaciers in the Himalayas? And what will that do to life in Uttarakhand and in remote Bangladesh? Secondly, we need to nurture the values and feelings that allow the student and the teacher to discover new responses – both personal and collective. This involves both the questioning of old patterns and discovering new affiliations.

The first point emphasizes the need to move away from an information based approach to one that encourages true understanding. The second is an appeal to make ethical thinking and understanding of values an integral part of the classroom experience. There is some danger here. Most of our schools have reduced “value education” to a mechanical attempt to list a few desirable qualities. There is very little attempt to engage the student in any meaningful dialogue. This approach is paternalistic and generally ineffective. If young people have to acquire a sensitivity to environmental issues that is not merely empty sloganeering, we have no choice but to take the long and hard road to reform.

What about the reference to feelings? This is born of the recognition that values and action are not merely the products of knowledge. A concern for the underprivileged, a sense of responsibility for other people from one’s own country and from other parts of the world, a sense of connection to the natural world and an appreciation of its beauty, all these call for a learning that is not merely intellectual, but deeply linked to our moral and ethical feelings. Taught not by persuasion and propaganda but learned through a process of discovery and dialogue.

Is this a pipe dream? Perhaps. But anything less is likely to be worse than useless. The environmental crisis is inexorable. It calls for the most comprehensive and energetic response societies can muster.

Conclusion
I have argued in this essay that education has a significant role in responding to the environmental crisis. But to be effective education needs to be re-oriented. And political action has to prepare the space for educational interventions. Mechanical, information based approaches have to be discarded in favour of nuanced understanding and a sensitivity to values. The capacity to feel, explore and empathize with others is just as important as conceptual skill. The education system has traditionally been very poor in nurturing these capabilities. Policy makers and teachers are both crucial to this change. The large bureaucratic organization of the education system is a hindrance. Teachers’ skills have to be raised. Can this happen?

In spite of the odds, we have few other options. And failure will cost us the earth.

The author works at the Centre for Learning, Bangalore. He can be reached at venu.cfl@gmail.com. *http://www.nature.com/news/specials/planetaryboundaries/index.html

1. Learning for life

2. Children and their environment

Burnout is the phenomenon consisting of physical and mental exhaustion experienced in daily life because of being overworked. It has been defined as “A syndrome that goes beyond physical fatigue from overwork. Stress and emotional exhaustion are part of it, but the hallmark of burnout is the distancing that goes on in response to the overload.” (Christina Maslach)

As the example shows, Kamala is experiencing several symptoms of burnout. Can you recognise any of these symptoms in yourself?

Are you on the verge?
How can you tell whether you are on the verge of a burnout or have been there for a while? Burnout can be recognised by its many psychological and physical symptoms. Physical symptoms include fatigue, exhaustion, feeling tired, frequent illness (colds, headaches, aches and pains), high blood pressure and gastro-intestinal problems. Psychological symptoms include frequent mood swings, irritability, anxiety, depression, feelings of guilt and blame, discouragement, anger, conflict in interpersonal relationships and many other psychological problems. In addition, appetite disturbances, weight changes and sleep disturbances accompany the burnout syndrome. Individuals experiencing burnout may also experience differences in their attitude towards work. Their overall satisfaction with work lessens and the importance given to work changes significantly.

Researchers (Girdin, Everly & Dusek, 1996) suggest three stages in the burnout process, namely, Stress arousal, Energy conservation, and Exhaustion. Stage 1 (Stress arousal) includes persistent irritability and anxiety, sleep difficulties, bruxism (teeth grinding), headaches, and problems with concentration and attention. These are common symptoms of stress that individuals often experience and teachers are more susceptible to stress given their interactions with children who are constantly demanding of their time and attention. Stage 2 (Energy conservation) includes feelings of resentfulness and a cynical attitude, procrastination, apathy, persistent fatigue, and increased use of substances (caffeine, alcohol) to manage daily life chores. This stage also involves social withdrawal and indifference towards work and life. Stage 3 (Exhaustion) includes chronic feelings of mental and physical fatigue that do not get better with brief rest, depression, persistent health problems and feelings of wanting to move away from friends, family and everyone. Often people in this stage can experience thoughts of suicide.

While these stages are sequential, any stage can be stopped with appropriate intervention. Unfortunately, most people realise something is wrong only when they are in the third stage, where, immediate treatment/help is necessary.

Burnout in teachers
Teachers and educators often face a unique combination of stressors that can cause them to experience burnout. While they are often faced with the common problems of everyday life, teachers also have additional responsibilities related to demands being placed on them each school year. New textbooks, new students, changing schedules, dealing with a unique population of individuals (young children, adolescents) each with their own developmental troubles, all add up to a sometimes deadly mixture of burnout syndrome for teachers. The helping professions have long known to be significantly impacted by the burnout rate among professionals. Teachers have the unique responsibility of ensuring the well-being and development of their wards. This responsibility can become a huge liability, when mixed with poor funding, limited control, marginal working conditions and unreasonable demands, leading teachers to live in a state of chronic stress that eventually leads to burnout. (Dworkin, 1987)

Interestingly, teachers who are good at what they do and enjoy their work are often the most susceptible to burnout. Teachers who enjoy their work often overwork and over time, begin to derive less meaning from their work as the stress of overworking begins to affect them.

Causes of burnout
Eminent psychologist, Gerald Corey suggests many reasons for burnout among professionals. Individual factors, in combination with interpersonal demands and organisational issues contribute towards burnout. Corey outlines several causes that lead to burnout.

• Repetitive, tedious work with little or no variation.
• Lack of appreciation and meaning in the work.
• Performance pressures which are unreasonable.
• Working with difficult populations (eg. Adolescent students, students with disabilities).
• Conflict at work and absence of supportive networks.
• Critical supervisors and lack of trust between management and staff.
• No opportunity for movement within the organisation or a lack of continuing training opportunities.
• Personal life conflicts like marital problems, health concerns, financial trouble, relationship difficulties, etc.

How to avoid burnout and return to a healthy life
Everyone is susceptible to burnout, since it is linked to how a person manages his/her daily life stressors. If you are not in the burnout cycle, it is best to start with living a healthy lifestyle. Teaching can easily become stressful and unmanageable if the pressures of work and life become too much to handle. Thus, following a healthy schedule can often prevent burnout.

Firstly, it is important to increase one’s awareness of current life stressors. Life without stress is called death and life with too much stress can lead one to death. Therefore, recognise that stress is an important part of our functional life and managing it is crucial to our survival. To manage stress, a few of “grandma’s basic rules for life” should be followed.

• Sleep for at least 7-8 hours per night. Sleep refreshes our minds and our bodies allowing us to feel rejuvenated. Gross deficits are apparent only after 2 hours of less sleep in one night or 5 hours or less in two successive nights. Impairment in dealing with more complex tasks especially those involving the acquisition and integration of new material becomes most noticeable as sleep drops below 6 hours.
• Eat healthy and regularly include essential foods in your diet.
• Exercise daily for at least 30 minutes. Most people find this difficult to do given their busy schedules. If the choice is between doing nothing and moving for at least 10 minutes, start with 10 minutes a day. Exercise of any kind boosts endorphins in the brain, which are better known as the happy chemicals, which keeps life stress manageable.
• Avoid alcohol or drugs, which can enhance mood in the short term, but have long term depressive effects on the central nervous system. In addition, using alcohol to cope with difficult situations often leads to addictive use, which leads to more problems than it solves.
• Avoid isolation and use your social support networks to help you through difficult times. Social isolation leads to various psychological problems and having someone to talk to, about your problems is always beneficial.

As a teacher, managing stress can be a challenge. Some tips to help manage stress, specifically for teachers include:

• Leave “teaching” to school only and try not to bring work home often.
  Pursue a hobby that is unrelated to your school work.
• Keep a to-do list to manage the competing demands placed on your time.
• Accept that you can’t do everything and that you have limitations.
• Learn to plan and prioritise.
• Increase your tolerance by understanding others and learn to manage your feelings of frustration and anger. Exercise helps in managing negative feelings!

If you are already on your way to a burnout, start by managing your current life stressors. In addition, Judy Downs Lombardi in her article ‘Do you have teacher burnout’ suggests the following to manage existing burnout.

• Find new ways to do old things. Be creative with the way you teach and allow your imagination to do new things.
• Challenge yourself to keep learning. Seek out resources that make your job fun and exciting for you to keep doing.
• Collaborate with your colleagues to help you manage/enhance your work.
• Change grade levels that you are teaching.
• Allow for your own imperfections and recognise that you cannot change every student’s life.
• Care for yourself as a person and nurture yourself. Conserve and replenish your psychological resources (emotional/physical) and be good to yourself.
• Explore other ways you can work within the profession.

In addition,

• Seek professional help if you’ve felt burned out for a long time and have not been feeling better.
• Do what you love and love what you do, but with limits.
• Spirituality and religiousness can be helpful coping strategies at all times.

To summarise, burnout among teachers is a common phenomenon that affects a large segment of the teaching population. Burnout has been linked to overworking and an inability to manage the stress of daily life. In order to live a healthy life, learning good stress management techniques, working within limits, and following the basic rules of eating healthy, exercising, getting enough sleep and using social support networks can prevent burnout.

Recognising burnout in yourself

Answer the following questions to see whether you have any of the symptoms of burnout.

Burnout Measure: Short Version (Malach-Pines, 2005)

Please use the following scale to answer the question:
never – 1                                        often – 5
almost never – 2                          very often – 6
rarely – 3                                        always – 7
sometimes – 4

When you think about your work overall, how often do you feel the following?
Tired Physically weak/Sickly
Hopeless Worthless/Like a failure
Trapped Helpless
Depressed Difficulties sleeping
“I’ve had it” Disappointed with people

In order to calculate your burnout score add your responses to the 10 items and divide by 10.

A score up to 2.4 indicates a very low level of burnout;
A score between 2.5 and 3.4 indicates danger signs of burnout;
A score between 3.5 and 4.4 indicates burnout;
A score between 4.5 and 5.4 indicates a very serious problem of burnout;
A score of 5.5 requires immediate professional help.

The author is a Counseling Psychologist and Director, The Hyderabad Academy of Psychology. She can be reached at dvmonteiro@yahoo.com.

Life Beyond School

It was at one of our editorial meetings. The small group was at its best throwing up random ideas and brainstorming for our subsequent issues. It was then we felt that for our September Teachers’ Day issue, we needed to think beyond the classroom.

All too often, teachers are bogged down by their everyday class routines. There is an erroneous impression that educators do not have the ability or perhaps the time to do anything very different from what they do all day — that is, teach. But we also recognise that to be a passionate teacher, one has to be good at planning, organising, performing in front of people and children, be imaginative and sensitive, and above all else be professional. So clearly, there is more to being a teacher than meets the student’s eye!

So we thought, why not help teachers to rediscover themselves, find out the person they are apart from the face they present in the classroom. We asked teachers to tell us what they do outside working hours, what makes them happy, what fills their hours. So here it is: five interesting responses from our committed teachers. Get a glimpse into their real selves. After the school shutters are down, what are these teachers like, what do they think and what do they feel?

• Once a Teacher, Always a Teacher
• After School Evenings
• A Time for Renewal
• Tea & Reflection
• The Learning Continues…

Once a Teacher, Always a Teacher

Shakuntala Jaisinghani
Hallelujah! The end of the play for today
‘Let’s on to the Staffroom’ All the teachers say.
The tea is strong and tastes good;
The parched throats bask in its warmth
And bodies sink with sighs of relief
Into the welcoming seats …….
A few moments of peace
Away from the noise and the pace,
The never ending questions
And the marking that haunts
The waking and sleeping hours.

Ah! The relief when the bell rings and your teaching day is over! Do most of us feel that way, or does the teacher’s persona extend itself into her personal life? I, for one, have never been able to resolve this. The husband’s remarks, “stop shouting, you are not in your classroom” and your child’s protests, “you don’t know how to teach, my teacher told me to do the sums this way and she is always right”, tend to send conflicting signals.

I had once taken my class on a field trip and my two children accompanied me as there was no one to look after them at home. My son, who was only four years old, wanted something and he kept shouting ‘Mom, Mom’ but I did not hear him. My daughter who was older and wiser suggested that he call out ‘Ma’m, Ma’m’, which he did and sure enough I responded ‘yes, who wants me?’ The mother in me took a back seat when I was the teacher. In retrospect, I feel that being a mother taught me to be a good teacher and being a teacher taught me to be a good mother. I was able to relate to my children and my students because of my understanding of the needs of one relating to the needs of the other.

In any other profession, one tries to keep ‘work’ and ‘social’ life poles apart. But with teachers it seems that ‘birds of a feather flock together’ is the norm. Most teachers I know bond, even socially, with others of the same ilk. This may be due to the misconstrued view held by others that a teacher’s job is the cushiest-what with the holidays and vacations, resulting in envy on most counts. It’s only a teacher who will understand the stress and struggle involved in being a teacher. The holidays and vacations are truly a much needed respite in a teacher’s life so that she can face the next term/session with the same patience and endurance that is her modus operandi!

Earlier it was difficult for students to think of their teachers as persons with lives of their own. There was always an aura of respect surrounding a teacher which made her different from other mortal beings. I remember once as a child I saw my teacher in the market and I was so thrilled and astonished to see her performing mundane chores of a house wife such as buying vegetables in the market!

But today the whole scene of the teacher-student relationship has changed. Students see them as ordinary folk doing the job of a teacher. The younger students still think of them with great respect and awe, but as they grow older, that view changes. I have even seen students and parents regarding teachers as people for whom they have paid and hence should be subservient to them!

Being a teacher has been a reward in itself. What does a person look for, at the end of the day? A feeling of having achieved something worthwhile? That’s what a teacher feels – the other day after two decades I got an email from an ex-student who is now at the pinnacle of her career saying that she remembers me because I had faith in her and taught her to believe in herself! It sure made MY day. Fellow teachers, rejoice in the fact that we do ‘leave footprints on the sands of time’.

HAPPY TEACHERS’ DAY

The author is an educational consultant in Pune. She can be reached at shakun.jaisinghani@gmail.com.

After School Evenings

Maya Menon
Triiingg! Ah the long bell! Walking out of my classroom after an enthusiastic but as yet incomplete discussion on the Origin of Life with 45 fourteen year olds, I thought, “Let me put away IX F’s books in my locker, can’t lug it around Chandni Chowk. Wonder if Sujata is still in the Science Block, hope she’s not forgotten…”.

Stepping out of the staff room I bumped into Sujata, my colleague, an art teacher, in the corridor and together we strode out into a cool, crisp, sunny December afternoon in Delhi towards the school bus parking lot. We boarded the school bus going to North Delhi. This was the early and mid 80s – an innocent, more easy-paced era, before the internet and personal computers and mobile phones or even faxes!

We were a pair of young footloose and fancy free teachers, wholeheartedly immersed in our teaching responsibilities at school – that included editing the school magazine, directing school plays, taking students out on nature trails in the scorching summer in the Delhi Ridge behind the school. But after 2pm we managed to pack in an equally interesting life.

So this December day we were headed out to Old Delhi – to Chandni Chowk, Jama Masjid and lunch at the famed Karim’s. We wanted to scour the alleys of the Old City to look for amazing bargains amongst the so-called antiques that are commonly sold on the streets. Karim’s wasn’t anything posh – it was tucked in an overcrowded alley on the first floor of a dilapidated looking building. I was then far less finicky about hygiene and ambience and the food was its redeeming feature – authentic Mughlai khana.

We walked tirelessly, bargained unabashedly and returned home, before it got too dark and cold, proudly carrying treasures to give away as gifts or display at home. I still have an engraved copper tumbler and bowl and a brass owl from that day over 20 years ago, prominently placed in my living room. Our respective parents were very tolerant of our newfound independence and light-hearted indulgences.

Our afternoons after work were our time to chill out, let our hair down, visit art galleries, go to the latest matinee shows or have extended lunch and coffee sessions at Nirula’s, when we discussed school, hobbies and the world at large. Often we’d drop in at the Janpath office of Neelu, a close school mate of mine to chat up with her and brighten what we considered, her grey government office life, with our anecdotes from the classroom. We would often joke with her that the only bright element in her office was the red fire extinguisher!

Looking back on those years – evokes warm pleasant memories. Our traipsing about the city wasn’t all frivolous – we chased dreams and made plans – big meticulous plans of saving up and travelling the world. We wanted to see the world before we turned 30! In 1983-84 I went back to being a student in evening school and enrolled for a Diploma in Journalism. I embraced this new phase of studenthood with a clarity of purpose that had been missing during my undergraduate years. It was almost as if that as a teacher I had discovered the joy of learning. In the late summer of 1985 Neelu and I decided to go on a memorable uplifting Himalayan Trek to the Valley of Flowers and Hemkund Sahib. This spurred us to be bolder next year and plan a 3-month travelling stint all over Europe and the US inspired by Arthur Frommer’s Guide of Europe on 10$ a day. And we did ourselves proud – we travelled in less than 10 $ a day. We stayed in youth hostel dorms and used a Eurail pass to travel across six countries in Europe. Single Indian women travelling by night train were a rarity those days and generated friendly curiosity and interesting discussions. Our parents were resigned to letting us go on our ‘risky’ world travels – but they cheered us on too with pride (their trepidation notwithstanding!)

I always returned from these sojourns enriched by memories, photographs and tales to tell my students. I even earned the sobriquet of having wheels on my heels!

My parallel life after a busy teaching day at school contributed to my own growth and education as a person. I sometimes wonder how my life after school would have been if I had been married, before I became a teacher, like so many of my colleagues. Would my domestic pressures have stifled all the joy, wonder and quest that kept me fi red and interested as a school teacher? Perhaps that’s what happens to so many of us!

The author is Founder Director, The Teacher Foundation, Bangalore. She can be reached at mayamenon@teacherfoundation.org.

A Time for Renewal

Meeta Mohanty
Life after 3’ is hardly conceived by a teacher as her personal time. It is not unusual to see teachers carrying loads of notebooks or paper bundles for correction almost every other day. Although teaching is considered a half-day job, it is actually challenging and exhausting as most teachers will confess. Every year – a new group of 30-40 children and the ownership of their education lies completely in the hands of the teacher who is supposed to have a magic wand and understand each child’s potential, hone their skills, groom them on good values and turn them into sensitised citizens. Phew! the list is unending when it comes to expectations from the teacher.

However, it is noteworthy to have a close look at the teacher and what kind of support mechanisms s/he gets to nurture the individuality of children. How much of his/ her individuality forms a part and parcel of the school system? I would certainly like to add that though schools have begun to pay attention to the teacher’s professional development in the form of organising seminars and workshops for his/ her enrichment, personal development still remains a road unexplored in many schools.

I used to be a part of an alternative school system where a lot of personal attention was paid to the ‘making of the teacher’ in the real sense. A year and a half ago, I was a facilitator at The Heritage School, Gurgaon which happens to be a school with practices in favour of teachers and students. It is important to upgrade the quality of living of teachers to actually impact the quality of learning in classrooms. Below I have highlighted only a few examples of some teacher-support mechanisms –

Induction support: As a teacher ushers into a school, s/he is usually clueless about the school system and takes time to settle down and understand the classroom processes. At The Heritage School, Gurgaon, this need is understood and every teacher who enters afresh is given a settlement time to know her/his duties, observe the class – s/he shall be responsible for. A peer-teacher acts as a mentor in guiding the new teacher about the class and introduces her to the parent community through emails, meetings, etc.

• Peer-observations: Teachers at The Heritage School, are free to observe each others’ classes and gain from such observations. Peerobservations are an ongoing voluntary mechanism and do not involve any stress or performance pressure. There is room for all to learn from his/ her errors.
• Retreat: Besides ongoing professional development, there are retreats organised for teachers. These retreats span over two to three days and are planned generally in natural spaces where some adventure sports can be organized for teachers. During the retreat, teachers from different class segments commune together as a group, unwind and share their experiences. A lot of resources are invested in personal development and in building teacher community as a coherent whole.
• Collective lesson planning and problem solving: This forms the backbone of the teaching community at The Heritage School. Collective lesson planning and reflective sessions, interspersed with hot debates on education, on righteousness of content, pedagogy, etc. form the core component of the teaching-learning process. Day-to-day lesson planning, theme planning, and problem solving is key. If one teacher is facing a difficult situation in her classroom, the entire group/ cohort of teachers support him/ her in troubleshooting. There is support from the management in troubleshooting problems. Every individual is given space to grow, learn from his/ her errors and not operate under any kind of pressure.
• Teacher Leadership: The concept of teacher leadership is completely visible in the school –where s/he has a free choice to plan lessons, be him/herself, plan the day, think and discuss what is best for children. Undoubtedly, curriculum in this school is developed by the teachers and assessments are also formative in nature-with portfolio assessment forming one of the key ways of assessing in primary school.

Only an empowered teacher can bring about empowered classrooms. Learning can only take place when teachers and the whole system undergoes transformation. To expect a teacher who is shattered or disintegrated in an obtrusive, compulsive system to bring about change and develop personalities is too demanding a situation. Thus, systemic changes are important and mandatory in the wake of a call for learning-centred classrooms.

The author works with the Oxford University Press, New Delhi. She can be reached at meetaprabir@gmail.com.

Tea and Reflection

Monica Kochar
What do I do after 3 p.m … That is a good question!

First of all it is 3:40 for me, for I work in one of the ‘IB (International Baccalaureate) schools’. What the rest of my day will be like depends a lot on what my day was like before 3:40 pm. How the classes were. Was I satisfied with all the work I did during the day?

Did I hurt any child unnecessarily?

Was I cool most of the day?

Was the teaching of good quality?

My evenings are generally spent reflecting on how my day was spent in the school.

I can’t seem to disconnect from teaching even after I come back home as teaching is my passion and I always like to give my best, or bestest as the students say! A job done well – a class where the children had a good time, an emotional trauma handled sensitively, a lesson planned well or good team work with colleagues – is the high point of the day.

The morning starts at 7:45 am and till 3:40 pm there is generally no time to remember who I am and why I am on this planet! I exist for the children and the principal. Either of them can need me anytime and usually it is ‘very urgent’. Meetings during breaks with either of them, watching over the kids during lunch…. I am often requested by mothers to see that their children finish their food since some of them are poor eaters. The children are so clever that they try and fool me into believing that they finished their lunch even before I could join them at the dining table. (Did they really say in the ‘body awareness workshop’ – “become aware of every morsel you eat and chew it with full awareness?” I am sometimes not even aware of what I am eating!)

So, evening is the time to put up my feet with that welcome cup of tea and two biscuits, pick up the newspaper and … breathe deeply. The day is always emotionally surcharged, for I work with the middle school children. Their emotional issues, so simple for us, so important to them! One wrong word, a smile at the wrong time, no smile when I was supposed to (!) and someone is devastated! As I breathe and unwind, I reflect on the day. (Do I need to apologise to anyone tomorrow I wonder?)

Cuppa tea over, and I get up and stretchhhhh those muscles. The sudden silence around is so welcoming. I can hear the birds, the leaves rustling, sweet sounds that I don’t pay any attention to until this time of the day. Depending on the season, next it is a nap, check email and then walk (Delhi summer) or walk, check email and then nap (Delhi winter)! I switch off the mobile, pull out the wire of the intercom – a short, very necessary nap and I wake up refreshed, ready for the second half of the day.

Walking here is a delight. There are finished/unfinished/never started farm houses all around the school campus and one can walk on and on and get lost in the wilderness. I breathe in the fresh air after spending the day indoors in AC rooms. Look at the flowers, marvel at the greenery, dodge the stray dogs and pet cows and try to think the staring village men don’t exist!

Back home – time for an early dinner. I live on the campus, so I have a choice when it comes to cooking…I can eat in the school mess! And I can choose from a huge platter.

And then is the biggest luxury I have in my life – my ‘personal time’. A long stretch of quiet time for reading, soft music, reflection … one or all of them. The quietest time, when the door bell won’t ring and the boss won’t call! The phase when time stops and something else steps into the picture. The nerves tingle and relaxation seeps over me. Peace, silence, quietude with only the lizards making noise in the background.

Semi comatose…I move to the bed. End of another day. Begin tomorrow anew!

(Oh! If you are wondering where my dog, husband and children are…sorry! I am a happy single.)

The author is a math teacher in Pathways World School, Gurgaon. She can be reached at reachmonica@gmail.com.

The Learning Continues…

Hetal K Pandya
My days at school do not end with “Thank God!” or “Ah! Finally it’s over…”. My school is so much like a home where children come to spend time with friends and us for fun and learning that it never gives me a feeling of working away from home. I leave my first home (the school) at one pm and reach the second by two pm! Coming home after school is refreshing because I encounter so many unique experiences at school that my mind is always thinking of new ideas and things to do.

A day spent with children relaxes the soul, it is like food for the soul. My mind ponders over various issues related to my children and the class most of who encourages me to think of better alternatives for making each day beautiful and meaningful at the school.

After my usual nap, I generally work on my computer, check mails and look for interesting sites pertaining to education. The internet helps a teacher like me in many ways. I no longer have to spend hours in huge libraries looking for books that can be easily found a click away on my laptop at home. On weekends I frequent the local book stores to find something unique towards furthering the same thirst of knowledge as a teacher and a learner. I am particularly fond of books on J Krishnamurthi’s conversations with children of Rishi Valley School in the late 70s. Such books stir the soul and provide answers to so many questions that modern researches or case studies are not able to. Otherwise books on parenting and children’s education are the target searches for me!

I have a few friends scattered all over the globe who contribute to education in their own way. I interact with them through email sharing photos, information, experiences, etc., which makes us all aware of the different types of education systems in various cultural and societal contexts. This is a good way of keeping both our friendship and profession alive at the same time! In the past one year I have been able to rekindle connections with my previous professors who are themselves treasures of so much experience and knowledge.

I love to write about my children and other subjects too. Any incident or observation at school or a child’s behaviour motivates me to write in my diary on a regular basis. I have worked in three schools so far and I believe that more than the school, I remember and cherish my experiences with children. My experiences have helped me become a better teacher and love my profession much more then anything else. I write poems and short stories about children with illustrations or small observations made during hours spent at the school.

Once I am done with writing, I move to doing other things at home… yes, the household chores! I live in a nuclear family and hence the onus of making my home a heaven rests mainly on my shoulders. I cook dinner and watch my favourite English comedies and news on TV. If there is nothing worth watching on television I read books on management, novels or magazines. The day winds up mostly at 10 pm for me and I go to bed with a heart and body at peace with itself.

I was working in corporates before opting to teach again, mainly because the vacuum I felt in other professions is not there in the education line. I began my career as a teacher but left it midway for a plum designation and salary in a company. A few months of introspection made me realise the value of soul happiness over materialistic well being. Hence as a teacher I “do not teach”… I “learn” and come back home as a better human being. I owe this happiness to my children who give unconditional love and respect which is a blessing rarely experienced by any other professional. They have in fact taught me virtues of patience, love, helping, sharing, respecting, etc., by their behaviour. They are my true teachers indeed!

The author is a teacher at the Toddlers Jain International School, Hyderabad. She can be reached at hetal272@gmail.com.