Saturday, March 2, 2024

War Vs peace- Mohini Rai

A 15-year-old child's personality is not a result of a few days, a few months or a few minutes. Each and every minute, each and every year, each and every person matters a lot in creating a child's personality. A child's behaviour reflects his or her surroundings more or less.

When a child undergoes a longer period of personality-building process and reaches a certain age of adolescence, then they create a kind of boundary around them which is very hard or difficult to penetrate and enter. And maybe this is the stage, which we as teachers quote - a stubborn child. And, possibly we are wrong because this is the age where a child's personality is too delicate to handle. Their personality is too fragile at this stage. Possibly it could be difficult for a teacher to earn their faith. So as a teacher, one should not be judgmental of students.

For every teacher, his/her teaching experience actually matters. When I joined a new school, my first batch was actually very difficult for me to handle. Maybe my experience was less. Initially, I used to lose my temper frequently. Gradually I tried to read my children's mindset. I started looking at every situation from their perspective. This is how, to some extent, I have learned how to handle my Class of 40 students where each child is different from the others. 

In my teaching experience, I have encountered many cases where I found that each child in his or her opinion is always right. A child never finds himself in a mistake. Probably a child's behavior has a strong influence on his or her background. The most notorious child in the class could be the one who later on respects the teacher the most. The most indisciplined child could possibly be a successful businessman in the future. A truant could be an IAS officer in future. So we cannot judge a child's whole personality and behaviour just with a few incidences. 

In a class, a child may seek for acceptance. When they don't get this acceptance, they behave in a rebellious way. This rebellious behaviour could be his anger or frustration. Therefore a teacher must keep calm and patient enough to read the children's mindset and to understand the whole situation before reacting. After all each child has a beautiful heart inside, which could be delicate enough to be handled. So we should handle them with care. 

We all accept the fact that children come to school to learn but sitting in one place for six hours could be extremely difficult for those children who are highly energetic. Children are basically like little birds who want to fly freely in the open sky. If we encage them, they will not be happy. Similarly, a child encaged in a classroom for six hours can't be happy enough to sit for whole six hours. So, learning should be done in different ways such as flipped classrooms, activity-based learning and some curricular activities. Such activities will add extra spice to their six-hour learning which will make this teaching-learning process fresh and fun-filled. 

 Therefore, as a teacher, I can say that a teacher is just like a gardener who keeps on doing timely pruning of the baby plant to make it healthy and bloom beautifully so that it can bear fruits in future.


Courtesy: Mohini Rai 
Sunbeam Suncity

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