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.