Learning from memory and laughter
Anuradha Venkatesh
Once upon a time, a long, long time ago…47 years ago, to be exact (since we are talking about children and teachers, both of whom seem to have an unholy taste for exactitude!), I was about six or seven years old and had been moved up two classes – from class 1 to class 3 because the teacher thought I could deal with the work in the higher standard.
My first day started with a Hindi class which a Hindi “sister”, as we addressed the nuns in the convent, took. She asked me to write something. Now, while I knew my vowels pretty well (that was all we were expected to learn in class 1) and having missed all of class 2 in the “double promotion”, I had no clue about the consonant sounds at all. The sister, who must have been aware of this, decided she needed to punish me for being “uppity” and saying I didn’t know, so she caught hold of my ear between her thumb and forefinger and twirled me around!
The physical discomfort I don’t remember at all but the humiliation – well, that was quite another thing! Smarting with tears that I did not want to shed, I walked back to my place and spent the next few days learning the alphabet completely – so that I would never have to lose my dignity in quite that way again! Strong reaction from a seven-year old? Ah well, that and a couple of other incidents as I moved up in the school, laid down the roots for my crusading nature which does not allow me to lie down quietly under any kind of injustice to anyone!
Fair play, then – is something that no teacher can be without…and it had better be a finely honed sense…children are very, very quick to sense injustice and while there is a school of thought that believes that children should be exposed to reality and the sooner the better, I think a too-early loss of innocence makes for cynics in later life.
What else then does a teacher need to have or be?
I think back to my own early years and there are teachers whose memories always bring a smile into my heart – a teacher must be likeable! There are others, great teachers, no doubt, who made no impression on a child’s heart. Kindness costs nothing and we would do well to remember that everyone (teacher included) has different abilities. Don’t belittle a child.
This is not so true of the teachers of our adult life – when we’ve learnt that a sarcastic teacher can still be a really fine exponent of her/his art, even if not so well-liked!
A good teacher must be able to generate enthusiasm – half the battle of learning (no, I dislike the word teaching!) is won if you can light that glow in a child’s eyes – because you have one in your own! My mom, my very first teacher, had this in abundance – the most mundane lessons – in life skills – that she taught us – gardening, cooking, weeding, learning shlokas – became imbued with something of the magic that Harry Potter exercises today – because she was herself so excited about all of these!
Respect – a child is a work in progress, NOT a miniature doll…do not talk down or believe you always know better (you don’t, actually). Some years ago, I called a friend. Her tiny grandson picked up the phone and chatted away with me quite happily. In a few minutes, as I showed no signs of putting down the phone, this sub-three-year old tells me, very patiently, as he might explain to a rather dim-witted adult, “I know you want to chat, but I’m really rather busy right now. So could I please go?” Phew – talk about demanding respect!
Each child marches to a different tune…a great teacher recognizes the tune and marches in harmony with the child…with the many children in the class. And how? For instance, while teaching Macbeth to a bunch of bored 12th standard adolescents, I figured out that one was into music and another into basketball. A third into athletics and so on. Each of these was given an assignment to research the subject of their interest – music, ball games, sport and women’s roles (for a staunch feminist) during Shakespeare’s time… there was a sudden sitting up and taking notice from a bunch of otherwise lackadaisical 16 year olds! Be creative – there are as many ways to skin a cat (also to teach Shakespeare!) as there are kids in your class!
Be honest. If you do not know something and cannot take an educated guess at it, say so. Check your facts, come back and share what you’ve discovered. I look back with the greatest respect at a Math teacher I had in class 10. I’d missed a few days because of illness and had a test as soon as I came back to school. I took the test, tried the sums he gave us (one a completely new concept I had missed out on) and gave in my paper. My answer was right but the method was one I figured out on my own. The teacher gave me a zero on that. I argued – oh yes, I was good at that! He came back to class the next day and gave me full marks saying he had checked and found that my method was valid too – I still think he was an amazing man!
My last and maybe the most indispensable one to survive, indeed to thrive, in a profession that is rewarding in every way except materially…is a sense of humour.
I met my daughter’s physics teacher in senior school at a dinner and he told me he’d never forget her as a student. Knowing her ability, or lack thereof, in his subject, I looked askance. He proceeded to tell me this tale…
K (my daughter), in class one day, was, as usual sitting in the last bench and not paying attention – playing noughts and crosses with her neighbour while a few words of physics occasionally made it past her eardrums.
The teacher calls her up: “K…, do you have any idea what we are talking about?” She has a vague idea that whatever the class had been about had something to do with gases and laws and says so. “So tell me about Gay-Lussac’s law,” says the teacher. (The law has to do with volumes of gases after a chemical reaction.)
“Yeah, you know!” she says.
“Yes, I do but what do you know?” he asks.
“Well, you know, he… (swinging her arms about) he…
swung both ways!”
The superb teacher that he was laughed with the class and gave her an extra lesson!
There are many more that are needed, of course – knowing what you’re teaching, is not to be overrated, by the way! Standing for hours, not minding chalk on one’s fingers, the sound of the chalk screeching on the board – all those too, go to make a teacher!
Anuradha Venkatesh is someone with a variety of interests. She started her career selling steel and now enjoys fitting people in their dream jobs as part of her executive search business. She works with organizations to develop their employees’ potential through training and mentoring in soft skills and communication. Her keen interest in child-centric education has led her to work with an NGO in founding a Montessori centre. She can be reached at anuradha.venkatesh@gmail.com.