More miles to go
Gurveen Kaur
Teacher Plus has certainly come a long way from a single colour newspaper-like format (with only the masthead in a different colour) to its present form. The quantity, quality, and variety of articles have gone up. Each issue maintains a high standard of language, editing, and content. The cover page is well thought out and each page layout is pleasant. There is an increase in the number of contributors and, so I presume and hope of, readers. Though initially I resisted the change to a glossy magazine format, I feel it has contributed to its readability by being easier on the eye. Teacher Plus hasn’t gone overboard with advertisements or become commercial as often happens with a change to a glossy format – understandably though because of increased printing costs.
The special issues are invaluable in the way they bring together different perspectives and aspects of teaching a particular subject. In fact I’d recommend them as ongoing in-service training handbooks for the teachers of those subjects and as necessary additions to school libraries.
Teacher Plus is not just a professional magazine. It thinks and cares about teachers – and not just on Teacher’s Day. Several issues show a concern and an understanding of the challenges of being a teacher – what comes to mind readily is the issue on the multi-tasking teacher, but there were other such themes. This gesture of making available many different ideas and resources that could improve one’s classroom teaching is based on a faith that teachers care to improve their teaching and would do so if they were given a bit of help. It appreciates that a harried teacher has very little time to look up resources and read many books because s/he has not just school responsibilities but also housework to cope with.
And, most of all, I salute the Teacher Plus owner/editor, and her team, for this publication. It is probably the first teacher magazine in our country and it has been going for 25 years. Teacher Plus has a quality that would make it stand out even amongst similar publications across the world. It could not have been an easy journey to produce and to continue to produce a magazine of this high quality. To come up with relevant topics, to find contributors and chase them to produce regularly within deadlines is certainly not easy. It would also not have been easy to find readers because teachers are always short on time and money. The absence of enough subscribers would have called for a tenacity of purpose and perseverance to find the financial support, to convince others to support its publication and to hang in there with only one’s own faith that it is a task worth doing.
Congratulations to the Teacher Plus team and best wishes for a long innings ahead.
The author has been working in the field of education for the past 30 years. She has been involved with teaching, teacher-education, curriculum development (at institutional and national levels). She is based at an alternative education centre, Centre for Learning, Secunderabad, which she co-founded. She can be reached at kaur.gurveen@gmail.com.