Time-pass

Ask anyone and they will agree that hardwork is boring, it's no fun. Let us just have a free-period they will say. Ironically, there comes a time when students crave for work and abhor time-pass. And we should make good use of these episodes.

We had series of events in school for a while now. Concerts, Presentations and Sport-days. Day one is fun, as children are happy to be out-of class-rooms and no-studies. These events, which require all classes to come together, invariably take-up a lot of time. Moving four hundred kids to do anything takes time. This creates opportunities for time-pass. You are either part of the drill or you are waiting out-side for your turn to come. That, mostly you are waiting. Soon children look bored and wasted. By the end of the day they look tired and rater disappointed. They sure don't want to go back to the class-rooms. But neither do they want this time-pass. Some of them even feel angry that so much time was whiled away.

Many children come to me and say they would want to go back to the class and study something. They were missing the class-work. This has happened more than once. These are the times when we can show them the difference between hard-work and time-pass.

I have been saying this in my classes, that you feel happy when you do hard-work. And however much you may want to enjoy, if  you do time-pass you will feel miserable at the end of the day.

I am glad that some of my classes are realizing this rather counter-intuitive thing. And are being vocal about it. Time-pass makes you unhappy at the end of the day, meaningful and engaging hard-work makes you happy at the end of the day.  

Dedication...

I have been promoting in my school that students should work without erasures. I find that children are addicted to erasures these days. Some teachers are listening to this. A Class-I teacher asked me to step-in her class where she is been practicing this for a while. So I sat through a number-names activity for couple of periods.

Firstly, age 5-6 yrs children should be considered entirely different species compared to middle school children. It's harder to teach kids this young; at least I don't have that talent. The task was to write five number-names (between 1 to 10). The teacher started by giving out worksheets and pencils. And a bowl-full of erasures were also kept in a corner, just in case someone wanted one. All were ready, with their pencils in hand.

As they got into the work, what struck me the most was how very dedicated they looked as they wrote. Each one was almost carving each letter systematically on to the line. No one looking here and there. The slow children took longer time, some children had wonderful hand some didn't. There seemed much larger spread in their abilities to write number-words. Yet, they had one thing in common, they were serious about getting it done well. They all were writing with absolute dedication.

I wished I could achieve that kind of focus on 'task at hand' in my middle school children. May be as children become aware of their own standing in rest of the class they tend to take the tasks lightly. Sometimes they do focus however as in this Class, the ability to put your mind to a single and simple task was amazing. One would want to preserve that attitude as children grow older. So that is what I learned in my visit to Class-I.

What about the erasures ? A few children did walk-up to the front to borrow the erasure, but most didn't. They were willing to work more diligently rather than rush for an erasure. Not having an erasure handy, may be, helped in focusing on the task. I don't know if this is wishful thinking, time should tell.

Update : This great dedicated teacher left the school recently. So the experiment couldn't go for long. Alas, that is how teaching and learning proceeds these days. 

Being Indian...

Early in my teaching life, I used to get upset when kids would bring their work saying they have "finished". Now I know why. Because most often, when you looked at their work, it is far from finished. It is poorly done and not enough efforts was put-in. In fact that is why it got over so early. So I came to dread this word - Finish.

One day when a child said "I am finished", I joked and asked, "Are you from Finland ? then why are you saying I am Finish". I send the child back to edit his work. But they are smart kids. This prank worked for a some time, then another kid submitted his half-done work and said "I am done". Well I then asked "Are you from Denmark ? then why are you saying I am Done ?" and I send him back. I began to ask, 'Are you Indian or not ?'

It is important that children see their work as not "done" when it could be improved, till the period bell rings. Too often children don't re-visit their own work. Their first thought is their last thought. They even think it is unfair to ask them to revise. We teachers are equally happy to just get submissions done. But while checking the notebooks or papers, we wonder, 'why, he/she could have done better'.

Calling children - Finish and Done was my way to send them back to review their own writing. Then one day, a kid in the class said, we should instead say Improve ! for we are Indians. I couldn't have said it better.

Now in  my class, kids are reluctant to say 'finish', because others send them back saying don't be Finish be Indian. Some even say 'we are improving' when they are done and stare at their work, touching it here and there. So this has gone into the meme that - to be Indian means to Improve !

PS : No offense intended to Fins or Danes.

Trivial Pursuits..

Schools are places where aims are so high and noble that we are in pursuit of these.  Teach children beauty of science, grandeur of maths and legacy of English. Students should excel in Sports and Arts. They should become law-abiding citizens and should have good moral values. They should have discipline and respect elders.

To achieve this is of course not a small undertaking. Policy makers, schools and teachers device elaborate schemes to ensure that every one is working towards these aims, full throttle. There are exams, re-test, remedial classes, workshops, counseling sessions. If a Martian were to view this, it will appear mind-boggling enterprise to it.

In this grand venture, we have forgotten that - God is in details. Students are taught atomic theory, Algebra and Shakespeare, yet they haven't learned how to write well. They are unable to focus for extended period or write in clear hand. These are the details which no one is focusing on. They sound trivial compared to the grand goals listed above.

I strongly feel that we need to spend a lot more time on details every day. If children can learn to deliver details perfectly, the larger picture will emerge. For age 9-11 students, I have focused on writing skills. This means they focus on margins, indents, handwriting, structure of a write-up, the word to use, the flow of what you write. What you write is not as important as How you write. All the silly rules that a good copy-writer would use, we try to follow. We do writing exercises every week for one hour.

The benefit of this is not limited to English writing. It forces children to focus on a single task, it builds the stamina, it high-lights the "trivial". My hope is to get them to write well and for longer stretches. This is hard work for them and that is my point. Ability to focus on a task single-mindedly, even for an unpleasant task, is what is often needed in life. It is true of so many high achievers in a variety of fields.

We hope, foolishly, that by dumping a lot of home-work, three hour exams and demanding high marks, automatically will build these abilities in kids as a bi-product. We are demanding a lot of work from students, all of which comes out with a poor quality.

We need smaller amount of work, but with demand on greater focus and high quality. We need to explicitly teach, how to focus on details and how to deliver quality work. We need to focus on trivial pursuits.

PS : There is a documentary on design called "Objectified" in which VP of design for Apple products, Jonathan Ive talks about design. And he intensely and obsessively talks about focus on details, trivial details.

How to cook a story...

Very few of us can simply sit down and produce a good story or an essay. Even best of the writers do their home-work. They prepare the ground and gather their thoughts. So why aren't we teaching children to prepare the ground before they do creative writing. In fact, most good work, whether it is writing, singing or cooking, requires good amount of preparation.

In this respect writing a story is similar to cooking. It has four steps.

• Step 1 : Think about what you want to cook (write). Is it going to be pasta with red sauce or pasta with white sauce ? Think of a theme that appeals to you.
• Step 2 : Gather ingredients which are needed to make the pasta. Shop for words, verbs, adjectives that may go in to your story. Collect them together at one place.
• Step 3 : Chose Pots and Pans which are appropriate to cooking and serve the pasta. Paragraphs are like pots and pans, they each make a point which is different from previous yet they add to a story. So put your ingredient words in appropriate pots and pans (paragraphs).
• Step 4 : Follow the recipes , cook the story well by using the ingredient words you have gathers those pots and paragraphs.

 I have decided that children should spend as much time (if not more) on preparing to write as they would spend in final writing. So henceforth we will think a dish, gather the ingredients, collect pots and then cook a story.

Taking play out of drama...

Concert time is a period of high-stress for teachers and children alike. While annual school concert is suppose to be a showcase of childrens talents that is enjoyable to all, it usually ends-up being a very formal, put-up show-off of moral hectoring. One week before the concert, all activities are suspended and children are driven to meet rapidly changing external demands on the performance. I have seen this happening at a range of schools. The play is taken out of drama.

Children are natural actors and can readily provide expression for the sentiments of a story. Empathy with the characters in drama comes naturally to them. However, we don't let drama grow on them, instead we make them rote-learn the lines, saddle them with unmanageable costumes and props. Endless rehearsals only wear the children out. In the end, children just become puppets to the scripts we wrote, the dances we set and the props we designed. Then we encourage parents to clap for them. The common sentiment at the end of the concert is - Thank god, its over.

We are wasting this great yearly  opportunity to bring out the best from our children spontaneously. It need not be this way. Let us remember what is important in a concert - the creative presentation of children through, songs, dances and plays. Then let us remove the props and dresses, the rote-learning and dictated dance moves and poor mimicry of public songs. Often times, this actually kills creativity of children. Let the performances be as bare-bone as possible. This makes for a great concert which is original, creative and done by the children themselves. Let us put the play back in the drama.

Walk out of the class...

This is a common trouble in classes, especially in senior classes. When teacher steps out of class to do some errands the class becomes unruly and chaos ensues. When the teacher returns students are all over and drifted to other activities. Usually one student starts it, and others go along with it. It then takes some time to focus them back to the subject at hand. This is partly because the class lacks self-control and self-discipline. But why blame them, we never really teach them self-discipline. On the contrary, all along we teach them opposite. We train them to be strictly in control of the teacher. Teacher's presence is class is ominous and unavoidable.

We need to train students self-control from a younger age. To do this, I have been Walking out of Class deliberately. I assign them some work (reading or writing), I explain the work and expectations carefully. And then I ask their permission to go for a walk. You need to ask permission to make it appear as if they are in-charge and they are allowing you to go. This really puts them in the driving seat. Then I say, Thank you and walk out of the class. I have been missing from the class for as long as 10-15 minutes at times.

When I return, in almost all times, I have found that the class was working silently on its own. A disruptive student is frowned upon and made to work through peer pressure. I tell them, 'See you don't need a teacher to do good work.' This is a strange case where, less control over the class gives you better performance. Over time, I hope, they will learn to control themselves.

When you are outside your class, when actually its your period, you get this great feeling that your students are working on their own.

Neither Drones, Nor Slackers

There is this dilemma about teaching. If you teach too explicitly you end up brain-washing kids. The fear is they will end-up drones. On the other hand, if you teach them abstract (at a high-level) then the kids may never get the point. They may end-up being slackers. So how does one "not" program them yet convey the higher principles of learning.

Consider English writing as an example. If we dictate the work too closely then they may never learn to write well on their own. And if we give them high-level guide-lines then also they may never learn to write well. So how do we proceed to educate them in creative writing ?

I think that if you do enough of  high-level work, then children eventually figure-out the core principles of good work. i.e. They get it ! However, you need to do a variety of work with them so that they start seeing the high-level organization of the activity.

I have been doing 'writing skills' for age 9 kids, where I lay-out very high-level principles of good writing and set them off on some writing of their own. Today, I got the first convert in my class. One student complained to me that the English teacher asked them to do the character sketch but asked them to look into the book and copy. "It was unfair for teacher to give such a short-cut, when we wanted to do the character sketch", the student said. "This wasn't  much fun as it is in your class". So the kids are learning the high-level message in my activities. And when they do, they are disappointed by the drone-work -that is neither fun nor education.

The lesson is, do a variety of high-level academic activities and kids will assimilate the core academic principles, may it be creative writing, listening or doing science experiments.

Do 3H Work...

What is 'good' work ? How do we expect kids to identify good work ? The short answer is, we don't. No where in our schooling do we openly and explicitly tell children how to identify good in their own work, or in the work of others. What we do instead is give them a number (actually a ratio of numbers) that we call, marks. And from this single number, we expect students to infer what is good/bad work and also better themselves. Really, does anyone think this will work.

I have decided to teach children (Age 8-10) how to identify good work. And it is not that difficult a thing to learn.  The answer is -  Do 3H work ! If your work has the three 'H's then it is surely a good work. The three H's are - Hand, Head and Heart.

Your work should show that you have used your Hand well. That is, your presentation is neat and your hand-writing is good. And don't smudge your mistakes but nicely cross them. If you watch out for these few things, that means you have used your Hand in your work.

You should use your Head as well. Think before your write. Write exactly what you think. Children sometimes ramble or write too less. So thinking what to write before you start writing is worth it. And it shows if you have used your Head in your writing. There are better words, new ideas and freshness in your writing when you use your Head.

Lastly, the work should be done with Heart in it. As one class IV boy put it eloquently, "Do work with your heart and soul in it", no kidding ! Work done without heart is - 'time pass'. And it shows, if you have done the work with heart or not. Surprisingly, I found that children are good at identifying if the work was done with Heart in it, or was it a causal work.

So if your work has above three H's then it is a good work. I now routinely ask children to look at their own and other's work. And they guess if it is 3H work or not. Mind you, they are very critical, even of themselves. And 3H work gets a round of applause in my class.

The mantra is - Do 3H work !

Education formula, revisited

What happens in most schools is "we teach+they learn". Though as I said before, there is lot more focus on "we teach" than on "they learn". The assumption is, if we do these rigorously then it will lead to better education. Hence "education = we teach + they learn". Most of the education edifice is designed to mandate this. However, after looking at what actually goes on in the classroom (and outside it), I think this formula is plain wrong.

The right formula should be "education = we coach + they want to learn". Coaching is not same as teaching. And learning is not same as 'want to learn'.

Consider "they want to learn" part. We take it for granted that good teaching will lead to good learning. Well, only if they want to learn. We hardly follow any formal methods which promote this "want". In fact, there is no thought given to promote "want of learning". On the contrary, schools do their best to destroy urge to learn through homework, exams, punishments, rewards or by simply boring them 8 hours a day for 10 years. If you pause to reflect, school is hardly a place where you would get an urge to learn. Thus we need see how to transform a class-room where urge to learn is created.

Consider "we coach" part. When someone wants to learn then the correct model is not to "teach" but to "coach". 'Teaching' evokes a taste as in case of  "let me teach you a lesson'. Coaching and mentoring, on the other hand, requires different approach and methods in the class. A teacher should act more like a sports-teacher - training and practicing. This is not what teachers do or are trained to do. So in order to be a coach and mentor a teacher will have to shift his/her mindset in first place.

We have invested enormous time, effort, money and thought in the "education = we teach + they learn" empire. It's not leading to education, much less getting the best from each child. It will not be easy to shift the focus to "education = we coach + they want to learn". However, unless this shift happens, schools will remain places where students get degrees and not an education.

The education formula

It is common to think that Education is about teaching and learning. That is to say that "education = we teach + they learn". Naturally, much of the schooling is geared to make this formula work. There is grand edifice for making teachers teach (BEds/CTET etc) and another empire to make children learn (SSC/CBSE/Grades etc).

Even with this view of the education, lot more attention is paid to "we teach" part than is paid to "they learn" part. We evaluate teachers, enforce portions, mandate teacher-training workshops and  tests etc. There is a lot of talk about how to teach better. The question - "Are you a good teacher ?"  is like a hanging sword.

This has created a mind-set that "bad education" implies "bad teaching". If only we can improve teaching, the education of child will improve. This belief is confirmed every time we run into a bad teacher. 'My child is not learning because of bad teachers' - is commonly held view. This is no doubt true, but only half so.

We have neglected the "they learn" part of the equation, to the extent that students (and parents) don't realize that learning is also a responsibility. Yes, we do make exams, attendance and notes mandatory to ensures that the work is done. However work-is-done isn't same as learning is done. So we are kidding ourselves that, by making rules we will force children to learn.

If you were to believe in the formula  "education = we teach + they learn" we need to accept that for a good education there has to be both, 50/50. That means we should see what is happening to "they learn" part. If the students are not learning, then parents and students themselves have some responsibility. Is that accepted ?  Unless we look at both parts of education, it is unlikely that we will improve it.

PS : In the next post, I will suggest that this formula "education = we teach + they learn" is not quite correct either. 

It's not about models...

This needs to be said again, and again. Science is not about working models. Science is not about making posters and charts. Teachers and parents have conspired to take this convenient short-cut and spread the idea that making look-alike models is doing science. This is absolutely not true.

Recently, we had a science expo where students were suppose to demonstrate experiments. As expected most students got zealously down to making models and charts. Some went high-tech with electronics, robotics and building circuits with flashing lights.

My class (age 10-11) decided that there will no models or printed charts from the internet. On the contrary, we decided to do interesting cognitive experiments on people to show how brain works. By doing some simple, tricky experiments on the students, I convinced the class that this was exciting and interesting.

We actually planned to do measurements on the people - how fast is their response, how does our taste-buds work, what is the highest frequency sound your ear can here, how long it takes to replenish the photosensitive pigments in the eye.

We could put-up almost two dozen such experiments. Kids were super excited about experimenting with adults - parents - who visited their stalls.

Later on I heard from multiple people that of all the projects, my class students were most animated and excited to do the experiments and explain the results.

So contrary to current fashion of creating models, real science can be done through simple and thought-provoking experiments. What's more, I find that students enjoy these even better.  

Two plus two equals..

What distinguishes us from other animals is our ability to infer things. We can figure out things we have never seen before using what we already know. Or can we ?

In a recent exam we had asked students to give two examples of "liquid waste" and "deficiency diseases". We hadn't actually used these terms in the class ever. We were surprised to see that most students failed the question. When one knows 'liquid', 'waste', 'deficiency' and 'diseases'; can't one get 'liquid waste' or 'deficiency diseases' ?

This was depressing. Science is all about inferring, extrapolating, discovering things. Making a wise guess. So where did we get de-railed ?

The answer may be in the way we teach languages rather than sciences. We are teaching words and grammar rules. Marks in languages are given for correct answer to questions on chapters. Is this what language is ?

Words are not just entries in dictionary or text-book, they have wordy-ness. One needs to learn how to extrapolate or transform words to new meanings. Being good in language should mean you are expressive, imaginative, innovative, eloquent and engaging.

In languages, as also in science, two plus two can become more than four. It would need a different kind of teaching.

Stay crazy

One day as I entered the class a group of children pounced on me, How would I teach if my class was reviewed by the principal or an inspector ? It seems the previous class was reviewed by the school big-wigs. This got them started.

Children then told me how some teachers react to class inspection. With their mannerisms, language and how they even dress differently. They scold less, become more considerate. Of course this was in strict confidence they told me. Children can easily see through all this. So how would I behave, they were curious to know ?

Usually, I am little on wild side when I teach. This is deliberate. I make a noticeable entry. I clear-off the space for me to roam around in the class, I often sit at the back of the class and play with words as often as I can. There are times, when my class isn't sure if I am serious or not. They have to guess double meanings. All this happens as I teach serious stuff like circuits or joints in our body, and children take down notes. The study goes on in such light banter.

Think of the image we have build of The Teacher - little sense of humour, thick glasses sliding down the nose, scribbling on blackboard with the back to class, indifferent. I deliberately contradict this. I want to show children that its all right to be crazy. Just a little crazy. The schools are becoming too conformist. So much so that you can replace one teacher with another even at a short notice and life goes on as usual.

Their question got me thinking. What should I do if my class was under inspection. Of course I would continue to teach just as I always do, I said. May be I would pretend to be even more batty on that day. This thrilled them.

Let us break some rules - at least those which bring smiles in class.

Wild Bore

My students are quite free with me (a little too free at times, according to me). Many have come and told me that my lectures have got boring - said that on my face. Apparently, even  History or Hindi lesson are looking better than my class. Well, I agree.

In an attempt to try out a set methodology of teaching I have been following a pattern. I  follow a strict flow in my class (see the earlier post). It seems, students have figured it out. There isn't a surprise element in how I will teach a period. This predictability has lead to children getting bored in my class.

This suggest two important points. Firstly, the surprise element is important as it drives intent of students. They need to figure out what comes next - while I have to pretend that I don't know and throw the ball in their court.

The second significant thing is the way one teaches. I think How you teach has a greater impact on students than what you teach. Unless your teaching techniques are interesting, what you teach isn't going to go across.

Yet, large amount of time, efforts and monitoring is focused on content and not on the delivery. Teachers get set in their ways (haven't we all predicted a teacher) as years go by. We need to re-orient teachers into delivering content and developing different styles.

I have no idea, how I am going to handle the class as students return from vacation. Something will work out