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

Three ways to learn...

This is something I do in class, but as yet don't know if it has had any impact. There are three ways to learn, I tell students. The poorest way to learn is when teacher talks and you listen. This is inefficient because it has least participation or intent on student's part. Talking is mostly done by the teacher and its not in your control or of liking.  Worst, you can't avoid it, teacher can go on like a drone.

The second, more efficient, way to learn is when two people are talking to each other and you are just listening. This is better because someone else is doing the thinking and you can see the arguments for free. Also, the listener needs to focus on what is being said and one naturally starts judging - is it correct or makes sense. This has greater intent on listeners part and hence one learns better by listening to conversations.

But the most efficient way to learn is to talk to yourself, the self-talk. Here the intent and the participation is maximum. If you can debate with yourself, the sense of learning and depth of understanding is greater. You get most fun when you figure out the argument yourself.

Very often I follow these three ways in my class. I start my class by talking about a topic or a question. Then I do a controlled discussion amongst children. At this point, I often remind children of the second method of learning. By the end of the class, I leave some time for them to think and write on their own. I hope that this starts self-talk.

Knowledge+Skills

'Being good at something' has many components. One of the obvious parts is that you know a lot. An expert knows a lot about a specific subject. Since this is obvious, it has got all the attention in our schooling. We learn more and become specialized. We value people who know a lot. Also, given a long list of complicated things to learn, its easy to set a exam and give marks for the knowledge in any subject. Naturally, much of the teaching and testing is focused on how much one knows.

Yet there is a second important component to 'Being good at something' and that is - skills. Competency requires not just knowledge but also skills. Only when one has a fair amount of knowledge and high degree of a skill, can he/she be competent. However, our education system has largely ignored development of (say, academic) skills. Skills are difficult to teach, they required longer persuasion and hard-work. Taking the easy-route, schools have ignored teaching and testing skills. While knowledge is specific to a domain, skills are often cross-disciplinary and broad-based.

As a result, we find youngsters, when they finish schools, know a lot but they have mastered very little. Competency = Knowledge + Skills. Unless we are teaching both knowledge and skills, we are unlikely to produce versatile competent students.

Challenging them to challenge me

Teaching well is only half the problem in education, the other half is 'learning well'. This is a bigger problem because it requires motivation from students. While one is finding ways to teach well, one should also find ways by which students learn well. This part is often overlooked or not given enough time and efforts. Here are couple of things I do in class which have started to pay-off lately.

I often ask, What naughty thing did you do today ? or, Tell me one mind-boggling thing, or else I tell some mind-boggling things. Of late, some students have started coming back to me, on their own and tell me something new. A few ask me to give them a challenge, say a science question, or a maths puzzle or a origami challenge. This is pushing me into a corner, as I have to rush around to find newer challenges. The next day, they come back with the solutions. So I have managed to start the 'good learning' cycling in some of the students. This means that their half of the work is happening on their own.

This also takes-off some my teaching stress. I often use their answers and questions to start-off my class and integrate with what I am teaching. It brings greater willingness to learn. Remind yourself that - 'Learning well' is students' responsibility. It's the other half of 'good education'.

What Galileo discovered

I never thought a simple pendulum could generate so much excitement. We are studying estimation and measurements. One of the things that I wanted children to understand is the concept of 'per second'. So we decided to look at simple pendulum. Each group made a simple pendulum of different lengths using thread and stone.

The story goes that, Galileo was attending the church one Sunday and he noticed the swinging chandeliers. Using his own pulse, Galileo measured the oscillations. He found that oscillations can be used to keep exact time (which was useful for making clocks) and oscillations don't depend on the weight (which may have led him to the famous Pisa experiment). Would you want to discover what Galileo found out ? I asked, and the students got in to a frenzy.

Each group counted the number of oscillations in 10-20 seconds to find out its period (the number of oscillations per second). We did 5 measurements to get average and accurate period. They now know that more number of observations when averaged give accurate measurement. Tomorrow we will be tabulating all the lengths and periods and find out what the data tells us. What surprised me was the amount of excitement this generated. 

This confirms my hunch that children like to step into the shoes of Galileo, Newton, Darwin or Faraday. We should teach science as it was done by these great people. The way they found things for the first time !

Express yourself

It can be safely said that if you can't express it you haven't understood it. This, rather obvious fact, is grossly overlooked in classes today. The flow of information from teachers mouth to students hands and then to teachers eyes and ears is tightly controlled. The subject is broken into concepts and concepts into bullet points. You read these points, students write them and in exams they give back those points to you. This has hardly any space for students' expression.

It is not surprising that students are high on marks and low on understanding. The fault is not theirs but ours - we have left no spacein class for them to express what they think. This is a great loss because the process of expressing (call it explaining) is a powerful tool to promote understanding. A good explanation can tell us what we know and what we don't know. When a child tries to explain things, he/she is having an internal argument. If the child is correct then you will find a new and original explanation. If the explanation is wrong then you have greater chance to find out where the confusion is, either way you learn.

If you want to promote original thinking and true understanding then it is crucial that we spare time in our classes for students to talk. We should let them explain what they think in their own words. Expressing your thoughts verbally is a powerful tool to drive understanding.