The one month - First of many

Past one month has been busiest in my life till date. I cannot remember another month filled with so much buzz, so less sleep yet so full of energy. Even I did not anticipate a month which would so full of emotions, objectives, and deliverable and yet would leave a permanent mark on me. And so I have full empathy, yeah I have learned to be a bit empathetic, towards all my friends and relatives who must have felt irritated at me. One question which must have crossed their mind at least once is “What is he doing? He went to teach.” Some also put this to me directly which I really appreciate because this article is for all those. Thanks guys for the question. Even I didn’t ever know that teaching is so comprehensive of an art to learn. It is less of mathematics or science and it is more of an art. If you want to know what I was doing for whole of last one month, please read on. If you don’t want to know, please close right here but I just request that please do not pose the above question next time. Just come and read this.

I start with classroom management. I have come to believe that learning starts from there. All of us have seen an ill-managed classroom. I will give a recap. Teachers asks a questions, kids throw answers at will, randomly so that in 2-3 seconds everyone knows the answer and teacher believes that everyone really does. The kids sitting on the last 3 benches do not even care and so do(not) most of the teachers. Involvement of kids in the class is 30-40% and most of the things are done due to fear or due to hope of getting a reward. A fight may start randomly anytime wasting the learning time of whole class.

And so we were taught to set rules on the very first day. Rules, simple and few, which would guide all the activities happening in class and no matter who you are they are applicable equally to everyone. Then came the procedures. Procedures which could be as simple as handing over the completed assessment to bhaiya and as complex as dividing the class in 4 groups without chaos. The question which would come is why so much emphasis on them. The answer is very simple. Suppose a chaotic line takes 3 min to form and procedure wise it takes just 1.5 then assuming that a line is made 4 times in a day, I save 6 min per day and 42 min per week and almost 35 hrs in one academic year. That I think is called sense of urgency. Every single second is important when you need to raise the level of child by 2 grade levels in a single academic year. A class is just like a team and the teacher is a manager and I think an ill-managed team should never dream to achieve stiff targets. A well managed class is a right of every child and he deserves it.

Then comes the investment plan for the kids, the parents and the people in the school. Out of 100 children entering the 1st grade only 14 reach the 10th grade and only 5 pass it. The reasons emanate from classroom, community, school and everywhere. As a grown-up we always have this tendency of looking for incentives and so does a child. So when I talk of investing the kids in learning, it means that giving them an incentive to stay on the path of learning. It is just like employee retention. So when I say that I am the face of the movement called Teach For India then I should give my utmost effort to keep my kids on the course of learning. The investment strategies involve building a theme for the class and setting a big goal for the year which would be related to the theme. A child should be able to relate to the big goal and should be constantly motivated to achieve it.

Investing the parents involve visiting kids home and staying in touch with parents and constantly telling them about the aspirations you have for the kids and telling them what you expect from them. It also involves looking for the reasons of child’s erratic behavior in the class and if possible addressing it by talking to parents. Investing the people in the school means coordinating with them by putting kid’s welfare foremost and building up a harmony with the system.

Then I would go on to backward planning. Annual Business Plan is imperative in every organization and same applies to the academic year planning. You first set the vision for your class and then set the big goal and then drill it down to the unit goals and then further down to weekly goals and finally to a single day and single lesson. This ensures that all your efforts are well aligned to your big goal. This ensures that you always know that even a single day without learning may poison your pursuit. And so it ensures that there is always a sense of urgency in you.

Now comes the lesson planning. Each lesson has to be planned in effective and aligned way. I am trying my best to stay away from jargons. The core of the lesson is 3 parts which I would describe here. First is “I do “where I will introduce the new topic and will solve a question in front of the class. The solution is based on the step which needs to be mentioned earlier in the lesson plan. Then I will give a sheet with questions and ask the class to divide into small groups and solve the question. Meanwhile I will go and check the weaker kids. That is called a “We do”. After this I will give the assessment based on the lesson. The questions in the assessment are such that I will come to know where the learning of the child breaks and so I can plan accordingly later on. The fact that every child is important makes it vital for me to know that.

This is just a glimpse of training I underwent in one month. There is lot to be told about the month. I will keep posting more.