As a teacher, the learning never stops
Teaching happened to me by accident. It was never my first choice. I was at a point in my life where it was the best option available to me. But after 20 years in the profession, I’m glad I pursued it. Over the course of my career, I’ve had the privilege to teach children of different age groups. I’ve guided pre-schoolers as they developed their early perceptions of the world we live in, taught middle-schoolers hell-bent on being mischievous and helped moody high-school teenagers navigate the challenges of adolescence. For all that I’ve taught my young kids, however, they’ve given me back so much more. While I have hopefully played a role in helping shape their lives, what I’ve learnt from them most certainly continues to shape mine.
Acceptance: Pre-schoolers have no biases or preconceived notions. They are able to accept every classmate for who they are or what they are. As a teacher, I too learned to accept the kids as they were - no prejudices and no biases. With my acceptance came calm and peace in my classroom. Nobody was better and nobody was worse than the other.
Patience: This has never been one of my virtues. But the pre-schoolers forced me to develop an abundance of it. You can’t help but be patient when teaching a pre-schooler. A child of four years can only move so fast. There is so much to see, so much to explore. I learned to enjoy those precious moments with the babies. I learned to appreciate the effort and sincerity that they put into every little thing they did.
Each child learns differently: While this fact is drummed into our heads in training, it is truly surprising when you actually encounter different learning styles in the classroom. I learned very quickly to teach the same lesson in different ways, especially for the preschoolers. Sometimes I have had colleagues wonder if I was going batty because I would insist on repeating a lesson several times in different ways.
Sense of wonder: My little ones taught me to wonder – something I had forgotten in the rush of life — at little everyday things like raindrops caught in a spider’s web, the aircraft flying overhead, the resident cat of the school moving her kittens to a new hiding place one at a time, watching a bulbul build its nest day-by-day, twig-by-twig while we waited for the buses to pick up the kids… the list is endless. The learning that took place during such unplanned sessions was remarkable and never forgotten.
Technology: The students of my secondary and higher-secondary classes have been largely responsible for the upgradation of my technology skills. They taught me to make the best possible use of my laptop and iPad. The outcome of these sessions was the students appreciated my candour and were much more receptive of the syllabus I had to teach. A rapport was established that enabled me to use my newly-learned skills to teach them my subject more effectively.
Humility: In my years of teaching I have come across more than a few students that were extremely intelligent. Accepting the fact that the child probably knew more than me was a humbling experience at first, but I knew accepting it would help me better guide the child to fully realise his potential. This spurred me on to update my body of knowledge which then allowed me to engage my students in healthy discussions and debates in class.
After all, we teachers are only facilitators and not omniscient beings.
What’s most rewarding about teaching is what you get back. The learning never stops.
The writer works as Mumbai coordinator for Kids for Tigers, The Sanctuary Tiger Programme and is a freelance trainer for teacher trainin
Source: DNA, 8-03-2017
