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 !