Teaching, learning, and my own journey through these areas
V Arun
The setting is the academic meeting of the senior school. We are discussing some point and a young chemistry teacher walks in from her 10th standard class fuming. She says, “The students simply don’t know the periodic table. I wonder who taught them chemistry in class 9?” My stomach does a somersault. It was me. I was their chemistry teacher the previous year. After my initial feelings of guilt, I was a bit astonished. Only last year I had come across the book The Periodic kingdom by Peter Atkins and remember being excited by it. I remember carrying this excitement to class and engaging with the periodic table for nearly three weeks, much longer than the time scheduled for the chapter. I remember my classes going very well through this chapter. I shared this piece of information in the meeting. Just then, the class 8 teacher piped up and said that he had spent a whole month on the periodic table, and the class 7 teacher said she had spent a whole term on the periodic table. You get the trend, right? Just then the principal of the school said, “Well, well…looks like the students have been taught the periodic table for many years now, but they haven’t learnt it. That’s clear, isn’t it?”
That was one of those “aha” moments in my life as a teacher. I was left wondering what had happened in all these years of teaching that hadn’t enabled learning for the students. Mind you, these were passionate teachers and they would have done a good job of teaching, and yet learning hadn’t happened. Of course, one doesn’t need to take the word of the young chemistry teacher literally. It is quite likely that with a bit of prodding and jogging of memory, many in the class would have recollected, if nothing else, at least the basic concepts of the periodic table. But leaving that aside, to return to the question of teaching versus learning, there seems to be much to ponder here for a teacher.
Firstly, the idea that when something is taught well, it doesn’t necessarily translate to being learnt well. It could of course happen, but it is not guaranteed. What facilitates learning? When does learning actually happen? This is the bread and butter of a teacher’s life, but can we ever say that we have cracked it?
Early in my life as a teacher, I was amused and intrigued by Mark Twain’s quip, “I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.” This was quite true in my case. I went to over 10 schools and graduated in mechanical engineering, but my learning didn’t have to do with books and concepts. I learnt enough to pass exams, but my real learning was life learning. I shifted from English medium to Tamizh medium and back. I transitioned from city, to town, to village, and back. I went to government schools, private schools, panchayat schools and rubbed shoulders with children from different backgrounds and economic classes. I learnt from them about poverty, hardships, resilience in the face of adversity, and many other things. These were rich learning experiences. In short, I had a poor academic learning experience, but I won’t trade the life experiences gained for anything else. These experiences shaped me as a person and helped me decide my life’s journey.
Once my formal education ended and I was free to pursue my own learning paths, I have traversed a wonderful learning journey. At the moment, I am in my third decade of learning. Learning new things is the most exciting aspect of life. This excitement has an infectious quality and rubs off on people in one’s sphere of influence.
What hampered learning during my schooling? Was it the artificial setting of the school system? Was it the endless torrent of information thrown my way, hour after hour, day after day? The pressure to perform, and score, and please the parents and teachers? Was it the exam system, which, in the most skewed of methods, assessed and certified one’s learning with an air of finality? Exam results don’t have anything nebulous about them. Conversely, they are very finite, they declare to the world the kind of learner one is and puts one in an ability class. The unfortunate thing is that these labels stick, even going to the extent of one’s self-assessment. Was it the artificiality of the classroom setting, separated from life itself? Was it the curriculum, which often seemed devoid of meaning? Was it the repetitive nature of the learning? Was it because the cart was put before the horse and answers were provided to questions that hadn’t even risen in pupils minds? Was it the charged and stressed atmosphere prevailing in the classrooms and schools in general? Was it because all spontaneity was stifled by the rigidity of the system? Was it all of this and more?
With my savviness or lack of true courage, whichever way you look at it, I coasted through the system and came out as above average. I am glad that when I look back, I see that I didn’t buy into the system and came out on the top. On the other hand, it doesn’t provide me much comfort that I had positioned myself as a mini-rebel and remained in the back benches. Looking back today, I feel that if I really had the courage and the support of my parents, I could at least have walked out of my engineering, which was a colossal waste of four years, which in turn led to six more wasted years working as an engineer. But the truth is, somewhere along the way, my self-worth crumbled and I got caught in a battle to prove myself. I do blame the parenting I had and the system for this, but I was complicit in letting this happen. So the dark years of struggle took me past high school and college and landed me a job, where I had to prove, to myself and the world, that I could survive as an engineer. Once I gained the confidence that I could and silenced my inner demons, I quit engineering and started teaching.
As a student, I must say, I had the good fortune of being engaged by passionate teachers, particularly during my government school days. Whether it facilitated learning in me or not, I was inspired by the passion of these people. Even during the engineering degree that I loathe, I had the good fortune of having met a few passionate teachers. I feel when a teacher is passionate, you love them and in the process end up loving the subject.
My turning to teaching signalled the return of self-worth and the journey of learning resumed. Taking my own example, the greatest obstacle to learning was my trust in myself. I suspect this is true for many a student. Do other teachers agree?
What has facilitated learning once my formal education was over? I think it is the excitement of new knowledge, the passion to learn, and joy in the process of learning. I must say that I have not pursued all possible learning paths. While I may engage in the pursuit of some random topic, I have stayed with three major areas. One is in the realm of ecology. This includes botany and zoology. The second is in the realm of geography. The third area is history.
My learning primarily has taken three forms. One is the intellectual learning through books. The second is experiential. This has often been aided by the presence of a teacher. For instance, my learning about trees began through tree-walks in Bombay with a tree guru. The third way of learning has been rather intuitive. I started playing different sports when I was 20. My learnings from sports have been totally intuitive. Learning by doing. I have enjoyed all three forms of learning, and I feel there should be equal emphasis on all these aspects. The other effective tactic is to work on a project model. The last two years have been spent learning about the trees of Western Ghats. Prior to this, it was learning about the shrubs of the Eastern Ghats. My learning on these different paths have been insightful to me as a teacher. To know that there is so much learning out there makes life wonderful and joyous.
To share a bit more about intuitive learning, I enjoy table tennis, tennis, swimming, and badminton. The purely physical learning and its constant unfolding is an exhilarating experience with new learnings and opportunities opening up each day. Here, it’s not just my learning. It’s teaching others and watching their learning curves as well. The learnings in these areas are so nuanced and subtle. The way one holds a racquet, the way a leg is positioned, the mind-body co-ordination. There is much artistry here.
Early on in my life as a teacher, I came across Howard Gardner and his Multiple Intelligence theory. It was very revelatory for me as a teacher and a learner to recognize that there are so many different ways in which intelligence comes forth. In my case, while I was always good at pattern recognition which has helped me in my nature learning, I never recognized this as a form of intelligence. Same with spatial orientation, the ability to understand and connect easily with people and so on. This may not have changed anything, but to be able to recognize the areas one is good at, definitely helps with one’s perception of oneself. As a teacher too, I find so much confidence comes to students when they are recognized for things that are seemingly not in the conventional realms of learning, like craft, sports, empathy, nature, fine motor skills, etc.
Gleaning from my journey as a learner and bringing the learning to my life as a teacher, I feel the students, to have an effective learning journey, need a lot of freedom to choose their learning paths and a rich mix of different learning pathways. The learning journey should provide for self explorations, which enable their own direct learning experience and not be all second-hand.
As a geography teacher, I have tried to bring this by helping students learn about the phases of the moon, the tides, the seasons, rainfall, etc., which can be learnt through direct experience and later be consolidated by textual knowledge.
But as my friend and fellow educator, Stefi Barna brought to my notice, students can be contributors to knowledge too and not just consumers of knowledge generated by others. This happens a lot nowadays through online nature platforms like iNaturalist and eBird. Through these platforms, children also record seasonal changes in trees and shrubs, migration of birds and butterflies based on their own observations.
When it comes to observational learning, I have noticed that some learn by drawing out the details, some by taking notes, some use photographs and some have photographic memories. Here, the most important aspect seems to be to have an open mind, uncluttered by ideas. I am saying this because I have noticed that students who are good text-based learners with strong conceptual learning aren’t able to learn through simple direct observations.
I am now in my 28th year as a teacher and I feel that my teaching and learning curves are still very much on an upward rise and the years ahead are exciting with untold possibilities.
The writer has been a teacher for over 27 years. He taught in the J.Krishnamurti school in Chennai for 12 years and then moved to Tiruvannamalai to start Marudam farm school in 2009, with a group of friends. He is also into sea turtle conservation and ecological restoration in Chennai and Tiruvannamalai respectively. He can be reached at arun.turtle@gmail.com.
