Everybody loves a hero

Aditi Mathur and Ratnesh Mathur

Everybody loves a hero. You see, even if he gets left behind in Mars all by himself (I am referring to the movie ‘Martian’), he is unfazed, undeterred, unaffected, and unbeatable. He, to somebody ‘old’ like me, looks so unreal and un-human.

But, everybody loves a hero. So, let me keep my skepticism aside, and see how we can convert this popularity into what I would call educational or teaching advantage.

Advantage self
Everybody loves a hero, because he has so much heroism inside him.

The most obvious thing to learn is the inspiring strength a hero seems to embody as well as exhibit. Take perseverance for example – obstacles come in all shapes and sizes, but our guy just goes on.

How would it be if we were to ask children to re-read a heroic story or re-watch a hero movie with the express objective of finding where and how many times our hero persists? Further, follow up this analysis with a mapping of the same traits in our own lives and maybe actually conclude that we too have our moments of perseverance.

We can hop from one characteristic to another, see what we love in our hero and continuously dig for the occurrence of the same in our lives. Characteristics that I would love to explore would include courage, sense of humour, initiative, responsibility, righteousness, … and many more.

Advantage imagination

Everybody loves a hero, because he exists out of our imagination.

He is our own knight in a shining armour, doing what we dream of doing, achieving what we sometimes can’t even dream. A hero springs forth from all our fantasies.

This means we can use the concept of hero – to understand both – what are our problems, (what is it that we want but don’t have, for instance), and also what kinds of solutions we wish for and how we can attain them. As we invite children to let loose their imagination, we understand our problems better and in the same vein give direction to our solutions.

For example – let’s take the common problem of littering or not growing enough trees – and turn it to our imaginative hero to create a world that we all yearn for, a life to live for.

Advantage learning

Everybody loves a hero, and he can be anywhere, everywhere.

The core of learning lies in conceptual understanding. The hero of conceptual understanding of any topic lies in the key element, or the big idea that makes something happen. What if we were to convert such a core concept into a hero, a superhero and then ask children what are the things that this hero does and in this way not only make it interesting and engaging for children but also bring focus and depth to this crucial idea.

So the fulcrum could be the hero of levers, enzymes, the hero of digestion, denominator, the hero of fractions, adjectives, the hero of writing, eye-on-the-ball, the hero of playing any ball game and so on.

Visualize your concept hero in full superhero form – how it looks, what it does, what hero roles it plays – involve children in developing the hero – giving it a name too – like x-man – one who makes a difference in every (algebraic) equation!

Advantage teacher

Everybody loves a hero, and for many of us, it is the one teacher who inspired us – to believe in ourselves, to enjoy the subject and celebrate learning and to outshine ourselves.

We all loved our super teacher.

Now it’s your turn to be the superhero!

The authors run an open unschool called Aarohi and invite all readers to visit and see how open learning can be an amazing way to work with children. They also conduct training retreats and online training for teachers and parents. Visit www.aarohilife.org.