Teaching my students

I have a bunch of students whom I teach Math, Chemistry and Physics in the evenings for around two hours to three hours everyday. I try as much as possible to make learning interesting to them. I hate losing their attention and try as much as possible to make things fun and try to spark a genuine interest in whatever they do, try to make them participate actively. I go back to the very basics when I deal with a concept and give them real life examples, so they relate to whatever they study. Well I basically do this so that I don't lose them when I am doing something important. But I see that these tidbits make them remember these concepts really well. Sometimes I find that they manage to remember the stories and examples but forget the concept till I go over it again.
This meant that I had to go through the same stuff twice. This really made things drag a little and I cannot afford to spend more time on them, for the fear that I may have leave here soon and might not get to complete their syllabus soon enough. So I found myself getting bogged down and lost the motivation to teach them. To add to the woes the kids skipped classes because they kept falling sick. So I kept putting off teaching things till they were here in full strength. This helped drag things further.
Today I felt miserable about everything and did not want to start teaching at all. So I just sat down and asked them to go over what I had done yesterday to this kid who had not come for this class. This was a chapter on Ray optics. It had me hating it when I studied it and didn't want them to feel that way too. I remembered that this subject formed the base for many other subjects and I had had problems with them too. So I filled my talk with more examples than usual and was relieved to find that the hatred was not transferred.
Now I listened quietly as these kids taught the other one about the stuff she had missed. They didn't know that I was listening and blabbed freely. I was so struck by the fact that they followed the text and gave the exact examples that I gave, used my gestures and diagrams-in-the-air thing that I do! It felt great to see how well they were able to remember all this complicated stuff about spherical mirrors and that totally incomprehensible stuff about real and virtual images(that had me stumped when I studied them in school!) I felt really pleased about this and decided to use this method of getting them to study.
After a while we were discussing "erect" and "inverted" images and I told them about how we appear upside down in a spoon. They absolutely refused to accept what I said and laughed it off. They thought I was just joking and kept laughing. I rummaged in the kitchen to find a shiny new spoon and thrust it in their hands. They laughed till they cried and had a lot of fun. And I know that it is one thing that they will never ever forget. I wish I could surprise them and keep them in awe of science that way. It is a sure way to keep them interested in it when their textbooks seem to be bent upon trying to get them to hate science.

Getting to the point, those of you who hate my long "stories" I will get down to
The moral of the story: -
1) Must use lots of examples from real life.
2) Try to get them to discuss the lessons learnt earlier, a day later,

• this lets them get warmed up before a new lesson,
• gets the matter really into their minds
• and this is also a means for the teacher to find out whether or not they have understood the concept.

3) Demonstrations are really important, to get the point through and to ensure that the child remembers stuff.
4) Summarizing a lesson in the end does a lot of good. It even gets their thinking organized.
My experiments involve a very small number of children and I don't know how well they will work in a large class. I wish some 'real' teacher could tell me if these ideas work.

From teaching these kids I even come to understand that if they are taught science in English, they can understand the subject really well even if they are not good at the language( provided the teacher does not try to offer literal translations in the local language and provided speech is accompanied by appropriate gestures and diagrams.) This has made my belief - that children can be taught in English irrespective of their local or mother tongue - stronger.

Isn't the present system good enough? Why should it be changed?

I have mentioned my arguments with people here before. Arguments, I think are a way of learning through questioning. It is not about who is better.It is about which is the better idea. Why is it that we tend to take arguments personally? Why is it that we are unable to take a point made on its face value and not dig into it to identify some personal comment?

Maybe it is my way of doing things that makes me enter into arguments and causes people to take offence from what I say. Or maybe I have not evolved enough to keep this in check. I am getting bogged down by the number of people who are really interested enough in responding to the writing here. I have 5 people reading this blog once-in-a-while and have 4 of them responding negatively! Some percentage! And some encouragement!!
I don't mind. I am entitled to expressing my ideas and opinions. And so I will continue to gab. You are still welcome to express your criticism - as negative as it may get! :)

Some good ideas that I received recently was to put my writing into bulleted points. I think this involves more work than usual, but if it is going to make it better for my friends who have low attention spans I would be happy. So here goes trial.

Question: Isn't the present system good enough? Why should it be changed?

Answer:

• The system is very good only for some, who live in cities and those who are lucky enough to have means of learning outside their classroom (that is, learning things that are not in their textbooks)
• 
  
• There is no provision to educate children in a broad sense. They are mostly required to answer questions from a very restrictive text.
• 
  
• A strong base in math, science and language contributes to a healthy understanding of higher level subjects. Because of large classrooms and shortage of teachers in primary schools, this strong base is not laid. So even if we have the best of teachers for higher classes, the purpose is lost as children do not understand what they study and resort to learning by rote.
• 
  
• In higher classes the large syllabus also does not allow the teacher to go deep into a subject. There is a lot of pressure on teachers to show results.
• 
  
• Schools often trigger a sort of unhealthy attitude by rewarding teachers whose students score high marks in 10th and 12th exams. This even makes teachers try to coach bright students separately, so that they get higher scores. The rest are encouraged to learn by rote.
• 
  
• Competition in 12th and 10th std board exam forces schools to skip essential concepts that is included in 9th std and 11th std in order to gain more time to finish the 10th and 12th portions. These concepts form a base for many fields of higher study. The system does nothing to ensure that there is a wholesome approach to these concepts.
• 
  
• In spite of several measures that have been taken to revise and make better textbooks, the pattern of the paper seems to endorse and support learning by rote. The students are never encouraged to do independent thinking.
• 
  
• We have little to offer to students with slow learning abilities (or learning disability). Except for a few schools that are into educating such children, the rest of the schools simply brand these children.

This is all I can think of at the present moment. I will continue to edit this.
Please feel free to comment. I do like being corrected!

Leave the World A Bit Better - Ron White

I wonder if many people would be able to do such effective and motivating writing. I loved reading this and wanted to share it with all of you.

Ron White is the author of Memory in a Month - Train Your Mind to Work Like a Human Computer in Only 30 Days!, How to Develop the Mind of Einstein, Write It On Your Heart - Simple Steps to Scripture Memory, and 22 Success Lessons From Baseball .
One of Ralph Waldo Emerson works was a poem on success, and one of his measures of success in that poem was to, 'Leave the world a bit better.'
That line has always stuck in my head. Emerson said you have succeeded if you leave the world a bit better. And I have made that line part of my life philosophy. When the tide goes out there is a watermark left behind of where the water was.
When the waters of life recede from the shore of my being and my heart pumps for the last time, my desire is that there will be a mark where I stood. My aim is that the mark will say, 'For some decades a man occupied this space who saw others more important than himself and efforted to leave the world a better place for them and those yet to come.'
-->Our society tells us that success is measured by bank accounts, power, beauty and wealth. These are often the result of hard work, luck or birth. They are not evil and I strive for some of them daily. However, they are not the mark I will measure the success of my life with.
So how do you do it? How do you 'leave the world a bit better?':

* You give a percent of your income away to a charity or
church. This makes your community better.

* You save a percentage of your income to pass down to your
family when you leave.

* You volunteer your time for those who are less fortunate.
Are you volunteering anywhere?

* You mentor someone who needs a positive direction in life.

* You follow and get involved in politics. Our laws and
leaders will determine the future. You can have a hand in
that future.

Or you can amass as much wealth as you can, spend it as fast as you can on the fading desires of your heart and seek to please yourself first. Our culture might tell you that this is success. Emerson tells us that it is not. I encourage you to realize that the waters of your life will eventually withdraw from the shore. When it does, will there be a watermark?

Ron White

The rant

I felt disappointed and broken yesterday as I reviewed my “students’” answer sheets. I saw how the work of two months of evening tuition has done nothing at all for them. I saw that 13 years of education has done nothing. I saw that the consolation that I was offering myself that it is not too late and that things can be made better for at least these few kids was terribly shallow. I gave them a free hand, talked to them like we were of the same age, shared bits of gossip, giggled, made fun of and got teased a little in return. Just like classmates and friends. Then again I played caring elder sister and teacher. I gave them pep talks every now and then, encouraged them to do better, never criticized them for their mistakes, just pointed them out to them and told them how to better themselves. Always gently guiding them. Always asking them more than once if they had understood the evening’s lesson completely. Trying to see through their eyes, judge the expression in them to see if they really had got what I had been talking about. I took each subject, split it into the very basic elements and fed them with it. Afraid that they might become dependent and never think for them selves, I asked them questions relentlessly, coerced them to go a little further and see if they could find the solution in their minds. I used traditional methods of reading out from textbooks and explaining each word, going into the background of every tiny concept that was involved. Every evening, when they left, I felt tired; my throat ached from talking without a stop for more than 3 hours. But I was filled with a sense of achievement, exhilaration.

Yet it all came to an end last evening. It was not so much the feeling that I had failed to make model students out of them, turn them overnight into super-intelligent scholars. It was the thought of how I weak I am to make them unlearn the methods that they have been made to learn all these years. How they just do not get my concept of studying as opposed to rote-learning and memorizing things. They spend hours and hours of cramming; they spend hours writing everything that they have learnt. Yet in the exam hall they absolutely fail the purpose of writing a test. All that they have crammed doesn’t help them at all because though they crammed the answers, they didn’t know the questions… they had not spent enough time memorizing the questions to the answers that they had spent all night on. Their papers showed me, how I had failed as a teacher. I can tell you it is the worst failure I have had so far. In spite of the fact that I know I have done my job up to my satisfaction – considering that I am an obsessed-with-perfection person. Well so whom do I blame for this failure? Myself largely, for believing that 2 months can undo the wrongs that have been done to them for 13 years, the wrongs that have been done by their teachers who never tried to really teach them something, the wrongs that have been done to these teachers all those years when they had been students. Like some horror movie running in slow motion I see the sickening chain reaction that has brought the situation to this low.

I broke my resolve not to give them any negative vibes, criticize and speak harshly to them yesterday. I spoke through gritted teeth about how they were so much in deep trouble. With so many people up to compete with, how difficult it was going to be for them to get higher paying jobs. Stressed on how ignorant they were keeping themselves by just comparing them with their classmates, how they had made their lives shallow by letting it revolve around the marks in their examinations. How people in cities in this country and around the world keep trying to push themselves forward, pounce on every opportunity, how they are ruthless when it comes to competition, how left out and helpless they would feel when they got out of college and tried to get a job, how they would repent of the times when they sat watching their TV set playing some sickening, corrupting serial.

I spoke on and on for a pretty long time. While they sat frozen and wide-eyed at this sudden outburst from me, they probably did not relate to what I was telling them, they probably did not care for anything else except their marks, they probably never bothered about learning in its true sense. They probably will never think of the things that I told them, they probably will never come back to study here. They probably will start maintaining a distance. Or worse, maybe they will think that I was paying more attention to their marks rather than who they are and what kind of people they are, when they had thought that I was their only teacher who saw them that way. They probably will remain unaffected by the outburst. I know and God knows that the rant was against the entire system that had made them some machines that went about memorizing textbooks. I know and God knows that I have put my most sincere efforts into trying to make things better for them. I only pray that they realize what I have been trying to tell them. I pray that they find themselves and get the chance to grow into better beings and use their abilities better. For their sake, nothing else. I only pray that I can find the strength to continue trying to do this well, more for myself than for anyone else.

Emotion and practicality

I seem to be very famous for my arguments. There is yet another friend I had an argument with about why he thinks women are very unfit for managerial or any other positions. Well it does seem like an argument from the Stone Age and do not wish to discuss the issue with anybody. I believe in equality in all forms. Everyone is equally capable of things. (In case you wish to argue on this point, please leave me out of it. I am in no way interested.) But it was his underlying logic that interested me deeply. He says that it is the emotional nature of one particular category that made them unfit for managerial positions, because they not only made people uncomfortable with their emotional outbursts but also spread the tension to others. That was, I say, so right! People who bring personal emotions into work or into their workplace create havoc (irrespective of their gender, age, ethnic origin etc.) This is because people are not strong enough to control their negative emotions and allow them to cloud their thinking capacities.

There is nothing bad about emotions in general. We do not need to become emotionless monks or unfeeling tyrants. Love, affection, kindness etc are some emotions that do a great deal of good to us and others around us. I feel heartened by the show of passion that some groups in the country show even if it is extremely negative and aggressive, because it shows that they are not devoid of emotion. They in fact are just filled with some distorted form of emotion or passion that is drilled into their minds by people who benefit from this kind of show. (I am talking about some violent agitations or communal riots that keep happening here all the time) So what really causes these people to come to blows and destroy and kill mindlessly is their inability to control emotion.

A friend who asks not to be named (who will be referred to as Future Politician or FP from now on) says that it is the vulnerability of the uneducated and ill-informed that causes them to be highly impractical. They tend to be easily influenced and gravitate towards anything and anyone that promises some immediate benefits. They do not look at long-term interests, simply because they do not know how to. (That is another reason why there is a need for education or at least increasing awareness of rights and duties etc.) FP also suggests that we start educating people especially on how to choose their leaders. This will take us a long way in deciding how our politicians will have to behave to please people and remain in power. I must add that this process of educating people must be free from influence of any political party otherwise it will bring us back to square one. Thank you FP.

And for the skeptic few who wonder why all this bothers them at all and why should we bother about changing anything... Well people, we are all connected directly or indirectly. Whatever affects me will affect you in some way or the other. So don't just shrug your shoulder. Your future depends on what happens to your fellow humans. Try to make their lives different to better your lives.

Thanks Hari for your comments. It was heartening and encouraging to see that someone agrees with me. I was getting a little bogged down by negative criticism. I will respond to them soon.

Some preconceptions shattered

This is about the last comment. "The cab driver earns well. He gets his children educated " etc.
Preconceptions are a part of our way of thinking. We assume things freely and rarely stop to think whether or not our assumptions are based on the truth. If the person in question decides to get his children educated, it is great. But this is not always true.

This is a story that was told to me by a person I know very well. And it is true I believe. A few years ago, my friend was on a business trip away from home, where he met a business man. This person was rich, wallowing in money in fact, but was uneducated. He had built his business singlehandedly through his shrewdness and calculative business forays. When talking casually my friend asked RB (Rich Businessman) why he had never been educated. RB revealed to him that his parents had been very poor and were uneducated themselves. They simply had not had the means to get him or his siblings to school. After a while my friend asked RB about his children. He rambled on about them but never mentioned any educational qualifications. "What have they studied?" my friend finally asked. "Study? What study?" My friend was shocked. "Why, you have all the means in the world to get your sons to study. Why haven't you educated them? You feel sad for not having been educated. Then why deny them?" To this RB replied, "My parents did not educate me for the want of money. Now I have all the money that I want. My sons will get all of it. So why should they study".

Well this I know is a badly told tale because it has been translated, please bear with it. But I am sure you get the message. The cycle does not end. No money - no school. Lots of money- so no school.

Another thing about poverty and our assumptions about it. The Hindu's Sunday Magazine (30th September) carried an article on terrorism and its relation to poverty by Shashi Tharoor in his weekly column. You can read it for yourself here. (He talks about how terrorism can be made difficult to promote by eradicating poverty.)