Keep calm and create curiosity
Chatura Rao
Some years ago, I was working as a full-time faculty member at a college of art and design. A journalist and author by profession, I had never formally led a class before, leave alone at the university level.
I parked my car in a lane outside the campus, the first morning of the teaching term. Watching students enter the gates, my confidence unravelled very quickly. They seemed so grown-up, clever, and even world-weary. How could I interest them and keep them engaged in what I had prepped? I sat in the driver’s seat, but felt far from calm. I tried to breathe deeply, but shallow was all I could muster.
So, still sitting there, I took out my notes and went over my lesson plan. I was to introduce the 13 students registered for my five-week class to information-based narrative making/design. The institute encourages experimental styles of teaching, so I planned to work with ideas and activities that excited me as a research and writing professional. I hoped these would fire the students’ imagination!
The 18-year-olds I met that day, and for nearly all weekdays during those five weeks, turned out to be curious, imaginative, and eager to learn. They explored each idea and activity. They admired and debated them over, feared some, tired of others, and greeted several with delight. All of these drove up the energy and engagement levels at the sessions.
The students used different styles and tried a variety of mediums to produce narratives that ranged from comics to short stories, artworks like a wall mural and paintings, and illustrated essays. They worked really hard, driven by the strength of the ideas they had examined and made uniquely their own.
My first group of students subsequently graduated with design degrees, and went on to work in the industry. I imagine them applying the subtlety of their intelligence, their sentience, in the wider world.
My learnings from this first experience with teaching have helped me keep (mostly) calm through every class since.
I learnt that I can trust my students to be curious and energized by ideas, like I am … they are more likely than not to walk with me. They are as likely to point out new ways of seeing and making, that help each other, and me, learn further.
And this trust can open a space for ‘grace’.
Grace, to me, is an energy that participants bring into a working or learning space. Collective grace adds a kind of magic to step-by-step processes; it clears the way for imagination and enquiry. I try to trust this energy to yield learning for everyone involved.
When holding space for grace, I’m most likely to meet the learner in a student. And as a teacher, to meet the learner in myself, again and again.
Chatura Rao is an award-winning journalist and story writer, and a teacher. She enjoys writing stories based on research, co-created with community members and grassroots organizers. She is a visiting faculty member at the Srishti-Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Bengaluru. She can be reached at chaturarao@gmail.com.
