I always have adopted a flexible method of teaching. I have been teaching for the last three decades. I secretly, pridefully, hold a notion that I enjoy what I call, ‘spirited greediness’ for teaching; yes you have heard it right ‘a greedy yearning to teach, ’ and honestly, it’s true that whenever I get into my teaching mode, I’m a possessed soul.
I read I prepare, I rehearse, and I visualize children waiting for me in the class. It warms me as they genuinely wait with keen anticipation to gulp as much instruction and information as I can share; I’m mindful that conditions apply: handle with concern, friendliness, empathy, and humility. And partiality, ignorance, and superiority are never in the horizons of my teaching ethics.
I encourage, let me call them budding scholars, to enjoy my class. I applaud them being independent in learning, displaying boldness in questioning, standing upright in answering. Insisting day after day and nudging them to grasp this needed-for life habits. Always reassuring them to understand their value – every day, every year and far in their future. And I believe they have the grit and gift.
The agile dutiful minds set out every day to read, write, and listen, hard hours and days matter less to their trustful charms. It’s my turn to be supportively alert to assist in their efforts. It’s rewarding holding their frail hands, filling their eyes with holy expectation. Getting them to pursue their own pace of comprehending and understanding; to enjoy their strengths, examine their weaknesses, and learn to distinguish rights and wrongs. Thus, I go about to assemble cozy classrooms enclosing joyful expectation and healthy schooling.
My teaching would never dwell on what to learn but what to unlearn from the mountain of expectations from adults surrounding them. Free them from the deep rot of marks, exams, grades and standards, and status and the emotional ropes with which parents bind them. Watchfully, not to allow such unfavorable anxiety bear upon on them I daily work to serve doses of optimism, set hopefulness as a cover against the manipulative rights of parents and community as a whole.
Trusting all children are champions in learning; bearing this precept, I etch myself to be prepared both in body and mind. Have the heart to respect how important their inward likeness means to them. Well-timed recognition of the child’s bubbly readiness to learn and empathy to his built- in limitations. When smartly taken up by any well-tuned teacher, these are vital elements that help connect well to a child. Established truth says that mindless crowding with dry subjects more than a child can swallow may eventually dampen his interests; deepen his distrust towards teachers and diminish the will to learn – a fact universally real, to any child sitting in any class in any school.
Suggestively, this is one engaging template that can enliven any tender mind. A teacher who presumes child’s enthusiasm is supreme than the mechanical stacking books before their petite eyes. Stand before them with an acceptance that “I care for you” position. Believe me; you find the child keel intimately for you and to the themes spread before him. I think this quality of attitude adopted in classrooms serves as fertile molds; for a child to develop creative tastes and wholesome character to take shape, successively.Further, it goes on to evolve the very core of the life’s essential value- “to believe in himself the rest of his life.”
I consider playgrounds are bigger classrooms – fields where social, amiable learning takes favorable rooting. Learning seeps deeply in proportion to hours spent sweating in the play ground. Fervently, this is the gospel I hold as deep as the inherent aspirations that lie in any child. Painfully, unnoticed by many. It’s often quoted that “play is a relief from serious learning but for children, the play is serious learning”; it’s the learning where they are entertained and educated in one gallop. More hours daily in a playing field will discipline and brighten a child more than a year- long choking in classrooms. The Plato, the Greek philosopher, said in 380 BC, “Body exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.” Let parents take this to their mind!
