For teachers, beginnings and endings are commonplace. Each year we send off one batch of students and welcome another. We close the report cards of the year and open another stack, columns waiting to be filled. We put away our lesson plans and re-open them, sometimes needing to re-jig something because a new set of textbooks have been recommended, or there has been a major curriculum revision.

Yet, even for the most seasoned of us, a new academic year brings a small frisson of excitement (yes, it may also be accompanied by a feeling that the break was not long enough, or refreshing enough). There will be new faces, and the possibility of new ways of doing things. However many times we have taught that lesson on photosynthesis or those rules of grammar, that chapter on the Kalinga War or the Pythagoras theorem, there’s no denying that just having a new set of faces looking up at you will make it interesting…for a few weeks, anyway!

So here we are, at Teacher Plus, at our newest beginning. I say “newest” because – like you – we’ve had a few re-starts and re-boots ourselves. This issue marks one more of those transition points; the era of print has ended, and the age of the digital has begun. We’ve been through this already, so I will not bore you with the details. Suffice it to say that we are determined to focus on what’s ahead, and ensure that we stay in touch with what we have always promised Teacher Plus will be – a magazine for practicing teachers, and by extension, all those who care about how and what our children are learning, both inside and outside classrooms.

In the weeks to come, we will bring you, in small batches, our stories for July, starting later this week with the stories related to the cover theme: museums as spaces for learning. A museum is a place of exploration and discovery, where you can “see” things jump out of the textbook. Onto a wall or into a glass case, where you can, on occasion, walk through exhibits and touch and feel ideas. A museum can be many things: it can be a living laboratory (like an immersive science museum) or a collection of artefacts that draw you into the past. It can introduce you to aspects of a subject that go beyond a classroom lesson and maybe spark a lifetime of curiosity. It can also be an exercise in understanding how knowledge is built and curated.

Apart from this, our July collection will include many of our familiar columns – Neerja Singh on future-ready skills, C Anuradha on the curious phenomenon of e-techno schools, a fun and a fascinating project on chocolate, among others.

We’d also like to hear from you about your own beginnings – new or otherwise. The Teacher Plus website will feature readers’ contributions in a special blog, and we welcome you to share your ideas and experiences with others in our community.  

Usha Raman