Impressions of a teacher

Shakuntala Jaisinghani
A light article on how teachers and students influence each other and the extent to which teachers can go to motivate their students to learn.

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Understanding structural issues

Ketaki Chowkhani
In the background of three cases of sexual assault reported against children of different schools in Bangalore, the questions that we need to ask are: How can we nurture different ways in which adults relate to children? How can we ensure that the relationship between adults and children in school is not based on discipline, punishment and a sense of power?One solution would be to have sensitization programmes on sexuality and gender for the adult staff at the beginning of every school year. This will go a long way in undoing the unequal power relations that result in child sexual abuse.

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Where the mind is full of fear

Did you know that a teacher could be as vulnerable as a child (and sometimes even more) to sexual abuse? I didn’t. Purely because I was never wary, having grown up in an environment of love, care, learning, and nurturing, and I least expected a colleague to misbehave with me.

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A gender perspective

Avantika Thakur
Sexual abuse is inappropriate sexual behavior with a child. It includes fondling a child’s genitals, making the child fondle the adult’s genitals, intercourse, incest, rape, sodomy, exhibitionism and sexual exploitation.

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Blame it on the teacher?

Usha Raman
The recently released ASER serves to remind us of our failure as educationists once again. With children displaying abysmal reading and writing skills, the fingers of blame are pointing towards the teacher. But when we have an education system that produces ill-equipped teachers, can we blame the teachers alone? We have to find solutions to equip our teachers with good teaching-learning skills so that they in turn can produce good learners.

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The adaptive advantage of play

Priyanka Padhy

Surely we have all heard the saying, ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.’ And yet we often grudge children their play time. Or we put in riders, asking them to finish studying before they go play. There is enough research out there to prove the above mentioned proverb. Play contributes greatly in a child’s development–both physical and mental. So the next time your little students say, “Ma’am let’s play today instead of reading a lesson,” perhaps you should give it a thought

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Meeting diverse learning needs

Neeraja Raghavan

A brand new column in Teacher Plus, In the staffroom will have teachers discussing solutions to problems raised by fellow teachers. Expert educationist Neeraja Raghavan will collate these responses and put them in perspective for our readers. This month the topic of discussion is how teaching can be tailored to suit the needs of each child in the class. This discussion will be featured in three parts. This article is the first of the three installments.

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Where learning springs from

Aditi Mathur and Ratnesh Mathur

So where does learning come from? No, not so much from school as from the children themselves. When children are exploring, reasoning, asking questions and finding out the answers themselves they learn. Working is an essential part of learning–whether it is working your mind or your body. And you work best when you are energetic. Creative energy is the best kind of energy that spurs us to better ourselves. So help your children let lose their creative energies as they plod through their learning journeys.

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Science teaching with a difference

Pooja Birwatkar and Sugra Chunawala

India is a land of diversities. Why then are our classrooms treated as a homogenous group? Children coming from different backgrounds bring with them their own knowledge of their culture and society. When we teach let us not disregard this knowledge of theirs. By not acknowledging this diversity of knowledge in the classroom we are producing confused, passive, or indifferent students. Based on a small study by the Homi Bhabha Center for Science Education, the authors here share how science teachers can respond to this diversity in their classrooms.

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