The Art Of Teaching
This week we invited a guest writer, who has been kind enough to share his views and experience about teaching.
About the author: Dr Pranay Swain(pranay.swain@gmail.com) teaches
Sociology at National Institute of Science Education and Research (NISER),
Bhubaneswar. Post receiving a doctorate in Humanities and Social Science from
IIT-Kanpur, Dr Swain worked in different capacities with organizations like UNDP, Org-Quest (Dhaka),
Microsoft Consumer Research Extension Team at Cross-tab (Bangalore), Indian
Institute of Management (Calcutta) and Unicef (Bhubaneswar). Cutting across
different areas of interests Dr Swain is back doing what he loves the
most-research and teaching.
The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher
explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.
(William Arthur Ward)
I read this Japanese proverb somewhere- better than a thousand days of diligent study is one day with a great teacher. Reckon, nothing can be a louder than this.
Before one starts some work-be it
teaching, one should always ask oneself three questions - why is s/he doing it?,
what the results might be? and will s/he be successful? Only when one thinks
deeply and finds satisfactory answers to these questions, is it time to go
full-throttle.
And then it does not really matter
whether you are teaching poetry or accounting or rocket science.With
information revolution even rocket science is no rocket science these days.
Things have become available, accessible and amendable like never before. In
the larger context, I would always hesitate to imagine that the job of a
teacher is to teach (?). At best, it would be to facilitate learning in
whatever environment one is doing what s/he is doing. And, to facilitate
effectively one does not really need to swallow the traits like intellectual
curiosity, subject knowledge, planning, awareness, maturity, vision,
enthusiasm, etc. Beyond a point these are not so great virtues to possess. What
helps in a typical classroom situation is- attitude. By attitude I would mean-
knowing what to do with all those traits.
One MUST shed the ‘i-know-it-all’
attitude and speak the language that would connect with most of the guys. I
strongly feel that it is not infra-dig to drop yourself few rungs if you have
to (if you are a real big guy in your subject area). The point that I am
driving home here is- if you cannot make guys understand or cannot keep them
engaged, then there is absolutely no point. Well, the top 10% of any class who
are notch above the majority would always pick things as you want them to. But,
if you cannot easily connect with the back-benchers, then you are a bad
teacher! Sorry for being little harsh here to have you pegged so.
I may not have collected years of
teaching to bullet them in my CV. But I must say I was a quicker off the block (in
terms of learning the finer nuances from the classroom itself) than most of my
students. Besides, ones that I never forgot in a hurry as a student actually
helped me immensely. We were quicker than a blink to bitch about our teachers
who failed to create interest in classrooms. And, those do-not’s remained to be
eliminated when the table was turned to me. For every student with a spark of
brilliance, there are about ten with ignition trouble. Goes without saying that
a facilitator that a teacher is, should focus entirely on the such ignition
problem.Here a teacher’s being what s/he assumes is of utmost significance.
Marva Collins would put it this way, “I
am a teacher. A teacher is someone who leads. There is no magic here. I do not
walk on water, I do not part the sea. I just love children.”
We always hated sitting for long hours
in class-rooms. Watching a marathon is more tiring than actually running it.
That’s the very reason I would put my money on a KISS (keep is short and
simple) rule. Short because no one has patience to wait to appreciate you and
simple because no one could care less to dig deeper to discover sense in what
you say.
Once a friend told me, inside every C+
student is a B- student trying to get out....Now, this is what I call a
teacher’s primary responsibility. One has to run that extra mile proactively so
that those who need hand-holding get one at the right time. A mismatch of skill
and responsibility is the last thing that one would buy.
There is no ‘one-size-fits-all’
formula here. It would be as futile as
‘futile’ itself to sit down to dig out the subtle qualities of a ‘good
teacher’. My two cents would revolve around couple of things; one- be what you
are and two- be what the situation demands you to be. Simple as that- to be or
not to be is entirely one’s own call.
