Continuing to stay relevant

Vasudha Kapoor

What does a teacher need to be up-to-date about? Subject knowledge for one. Then come the methods and pedagogy of the subject. There are also the children, their contexts and inner states. Using the latest technology, knowing what’s happening in the world, the purpose of education, policy and its implementation, child rights, health, assessments, work-life balance, their own self. This seems like a lot to be updated about!

Here I share a few simple things that teachers can do to reduce their stress levels and stay up-to-date.

1. Take some time out for the self everyday. Spending time in solitude and doing what gives you joy leaves space to make sense of existing thoughts and creates a fertile space for new ideas to emerge.
2. Become an innovator. Make your everyday work easy and convenient. During COVID, teachers made handy mobile stands to record videos without assistance.

3. Be a part of caring and collaborative teacher communities. A space like this can effortlessly help teachers be up-to-date, share their ‘functional’ wisdom in peculiar classroom situations, reach out for help for specific needs and provide exclusive empathy to each other. In one of the teacher communities I facilitate regularly, I have seen teachers constantly share strategies that have worked in their context.
4. Read for fun. As we grow and progress in our career, reading for pure fun decreases. A space where teachers can regularly read what brings them joy can bring on reflection, pause their thoughts and make them more anchored as a person. At MGMD (Mera Gaon Meri Duniya), we have a decentralized library system with 12 thousand plus children’s books. These books are regularly read in all the government schools we closely work with. Now the question is, is children’s literature only for children? With a couple of months of encouraging teachers to bring literature alive in their classrooms, we have seen that most teachers have started to enjoy good children’s literature for themselves. They read and re-read stories like Macher jhol by Richa Jha, Gutli toh pari hai by Kanak Shashi and many more. I feel they have picked up this habit not because it helps them in their lesson planning, but because it helps them connect with their inner child.
5. Access teacher education material. Subscribe to good magazines that will help teachers reflect and learn at their own pace. Apart from Teacher Plus, Sandarbh by Eklavya is a great tool for teachers who find it comfortable to read in Hindi. Teachers can also share their rich classroom experiences in these magazines. Shiksha Vimarsh is another magazine that talks about issues in education.
6. Create in-house teacher circles. This may not sound like a very special idea, but honestly in how many schools do teachers have a dedicated time to meet, sit, and discuss student progress, parent involvement, classroom challenges and the ways they are navigating them? There is so much wisdom in one room but we are hardly harnessing it! The space can be rightfully used to create a school goal and further address interpersonal issues or help each other.
7. Observe another teacher’s classroom. Such an exercise can help alternate ideas emerge, understand one’s strengths and weaknesses and get food for reflection. When a teacher, who unknowingly used fear to manage the children in her class (not corporal punishment but subtler behaviour modifications like raising her voice, an angry stare, etc.), observed another teacher use positive affirmation and tools like behaviour management cycle, she realized how she could behave differently.
8. Partner with the parents. In many schools, teachers lament the lack of parental support and involvement to achieve the desired progress with their students. There is no better teacher for the child than the parent. Join hands with the parents, help them help you.
9. Volunteer! It can be a great idea to volunteer in other spaces. Working in an area different from your usual work can help expand perspectives and create acceptance for differing worldviews. Teachers affiliated with MGMD regularly volunteer in community activities like local health camps. This helps them understand their community better, expand experiences and most importantly, take a break from their regular role and realize their wholeness. In the same line of thought, get external volunteers into your classroom. After a preliminary training and need sharing, a volunteer can help with different tasks in the classroom. With the help of local volunteers, MGMD teachers could organize learning festivals in 10 villages, set up art, theatre, dance and sports studios in many government schools.

To sum this up, I think teaching is about DREAMING big and THINKING small. Undoubtedly, teaching is extraordinary work done by ordinary humans. More than being put up on a pedestal, this Teacher’s Day, let’s genuinely empathize with the teachers and acknowledge the work they do, nurture them and give them the dignity and support they deserve.

The author is the co-founder of Mera Gaon Meri Duniya, an organization that works in the rural areas of Madhya Pradesh to improve systemic foundations of the government school system through empowering youth leadership. She is also associated with an organization called Plustrust, which provides micro-incubation support for budding women entrepreneurs in rural and tribal areas. She is a Wipro seeding fellow and a former Edumentum and Changelooms fellow. She is a gold medallist in the Post-Graduate program in Human Development and Childhood Studies from the University of Delhi. She can be reached at vasudha@meragaonmeridunia.org.