Sunday 2 March, 2008

Teach-err…

When was the last time you had thought of revising your teaching strategies? Have you ever felt the need to experiment with the learning you had in your training colleges or break the conventions in your class rooms? If your answer is “No”, its time for you to change jobs.

We are teachers for different reasons – our needs are different, ambitions disparate, attitudes diverse. But once we are in the garb of a teacher, it becomes an imperative to move beyond our needs, deconstruct ourselves for the changing classrooms, and understand the new generation requisites. Every profession demands this refinement.

In our society, teachers are placed on a high pedestal, more or less like gods. Heavenly qualities have saturated the teacher-definitions. Hence experiments and errors are least expected from them. Many of the teachers believe the same too, because thinking otherwise would be a great risk, stepping down from a godly image would taint the reputation….. They prefer to remain gods at the cost of their own professional development. So here, the learners go out of their schools as sealed, branded products, with crippled imagination and handicapped attitudes.

Where a training system has failed to extract the creativity and enthusiasm in the teachers, the education system will not tend to do any magic. It’s high time the teachers understood that they have to expand beyond the quoted theories of the systems, because our learners need to grow as free thinkers, apart from ending up with well-paid jobs.

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