The Tradition Of Hope

Hopelessness is indeed a deeming reality and sadly we come across the term much too often in the world we live in today. It is attached to people, situations, countries and even ideas.

Being an educationist, I do tend to stretch my limits and believe a little more in people, situations, countries and ideas. It is difficult to explain this oddity of mine to most people who like to pull out conclusions based on facts and reality.

Most of the time, the dream in my heart is able to take some shape with a lot of planning in my mind. Often the results are not what I desired them to be, yet they bring me lots of satisfaction as I feel content at having given it a try.

It is a turmoil to watch a structure collapse bit by bit standing at a distance, unable to convince the people concerned of the arriving disaster. To me, that is but the only hopeless moment beyond my control. I feel helpless and often that induces an anger which portrays me in a negative light.

My mentor was a young Indian lady who always reminded me to look for that one strength in any situation or human being before casting them off as hopeless. That one strength would be my chance to discover a whole new possibility to build upon.

With time and experience, I realized that there was much truth to her philosophy. However, it takes a lot of time and slips before you are able to read faces and understand the complexity of minds. It’s a draining activity and many times I was left perplexed by the amount of rigidity in people and ideas. From fixed lesson planning and methodologies in teaching to denial of having gone wrong, teachers can be quite challenging to deal with, especially when the future of the children is at stake.

As a teacher, I was always open to change and experimentation. To me, the child was fundamental and anything that lead to his/her growth was acceptable and worth the effort. I would leave my ego at the door when entering the school. A learner at all times, I could never imagine my way to be the way of the world. I hoped there would always be an alternative to hold onto in case my plans would lose their effectiveness.

Today, education has started to fall into a rigid structure. The possibilities of discovering new methods, ideas and plans to equip a child with a better future have been run over by school policies and redundant programmes. Making a special effort to help out a child in need is considered unfair on part of the rest of the class. There is lack of will and sadly teachers seem to have accepted the system which murders the passion to reach beyond the hopelessness.

A singular child can awaken the mind to so many new dimensions. A failure in a plan can open the door to a whole new world of success. Yet we fail to acknowledge the world beyond our skylines.

If only we could inculcate that faith which upholds the tradition of hope. Where the only way to success is to believe in the potentiality of our creation.

Students Are Like Valentines

I wrote my plans with small details

And thought of each to make some space

When they were told to plan like that

They said, ‘I’m sure her laundry’s stacked!’

I changed my board with lesson plans

And followed themes to keep them going

When they were told to change their board

They said, ‘I’m sure she’s simply bored!’

I thought of ways to make them learn

And surfed the net to start from scratch

When they were told to think of ways

They said, ‘I’m sure it’s for a raise!’

I wrote them notes, to show I care

And build a bond to always share

When they were told to write them notes

They said, ‘I’m sure she’ll get some votes!’

I played fun games and gifted them

I knew they loved to be with me

When they were asked to play with them

They said, ‘I’m sure her brain is 10!’

I sat with them and heard them talk

To see just where in life they stood

When they were asked to hear them out

They said, ‘Oh god! She’s such a scout!’

And every time I raised the bar

I was accused of playing a star

My love for what I did was drowned

In doubts of trying to win a crown!

The extra mile that I would walk

To bring a change in someone’s life

Appeared for them quite hard to trust

Some ill intent was just a must!

I carried taunts all day and night

I felt there was no point to fight

I was in love and they knew not

That love’s not sold and neither bought!

To me my faith was all I had

To brighten up the days ahead

For every child who walked my way

To leave enriched and with a say!

A teacher loves with little care

For silly quotes and petty minds

The cause with which she lives her dream

Needs neither reason nor a scheme!

Students are like Valentines

For them she makes her plans divine

For that she walks that extra mile

To wrap each day with lots of smiles!

The Class Literacy Clubs

The ‘Class Literacy Clubs’ was an idea I generated for my Year 3 groups as a means to provide them a platform to exercise their Literacy skills. It was heart-warming to see how naturally their creative, artistic and literary choices intermingled with a conscious approach to express their inner desires.

At the beginning of each academic year, I prepared and dedicated one soft board entirely to this learning concept and spoke to the parents at length about its objectives at the Student Orientation Day.

The Clubs were:

Writers Dome

Poets Gallery

Readers Ring

Speakers Shoal

The most important targets to achieve through these clubs were:

1.   Create a conscious awareness of the ‘Four integral Literacy Skills’ attached to the English language.

2.   Provide a stage for them to put into practice and apply their understanding of what they acquire from their Literacy lessons.

3.  To replace the drudgery of learning a language into something exciting and worthy of attention.

4.  To realize their own artistic inclinations and discover their hidden talents on expression.

5.  Grow in their vocabulary and comprehension abilities through precise interpretation of the ‘Weekly Themes’.

6.  Create a timeline to observe their ‘Language Achievement’ growth from the beginning of the year till the end.

7. Promote an air of participation with choice and reward them with promised incentives.

8.  Develop a critical ear through sharing of text and ideas across the classroom.

9.  Appreciate each other’s work and efforts.

10.               Frame short story and poetry books for the School Book Week to display in the Library. Book reviews were displayed on to chart papers to grace the library walls again!

Every week a theme was chosen by the class through voting. The theme would be marked into their diaries for parents to acknowledge and encourage their children to present their ideas either in printed form or simply using a pencil.

At first the more interested lot presented their theme depiction in beautiful art work and colours. The ones who did not take the incentive too seriously deposited their torn pieces of paper with much scribbling. I accepted their work and displayed it along with the shiny ones on the soft board. Quite naturally, their next contributions were much more focused and carried a little more thought!

The idea of this programme was to instil in each child a sense of pride in the way they interpreted and perceived their ideas. They enjoyed working on different themes as, ‘Alien’,  ‘Magic’, ‘Outer Space’, ‘Famous Neighbour’ and ‘My Character Theme’!

Apart from that, they proudly created a series of story books on paper with illustrations on two outer space characters named ‘Bugsy and Fireball!’ They worked in groups to create various adventures for these characters and these were presented to the library to showcase their hard work!

In the Year 3 Newsletter, we had designed a special space for these Club Cadets who selected the most interesting pieces and then provided a critical analysis on them. The ones in the Speakers Shoal often participated by sharing their views on their friends work and at times shared their ideas in the School Assembly as well.

Some of the most memorable rewards that these Club Cadets enjoyed were watching E-T for contributing to the Outer Space theme and a magical ball for their Magic Theme. The children and teachers came dressed to compliment the themes and it was the greatest motivational tool that I’ve ever used.

The Class Literacy Clubs fulfilled many desired objectives and at the same time provided all of us with an opportunity to appreciate each other’s Creative Crafts!

The Trial Of The Litter Queen

The Reading class was always quite entertaining because there were many thrilling activities attached to the “Book of the Week”. The children thoroughly enjoyed the “Oxford Reading Tree” series and looked forward to the literacy hour.

In class I had created a corner where the ‘Book of the Week’ would be displayed and children would be counting days to get a hold of their copy. I always followed a set pattern as far as the reading was concerned. We all sat in a circle on the mat. The copies of the story were distributed. We went through the pictures first, covering the text. The logic there was to satisfy their curious minds that focused on the visuals primarily. 

To ensure that their interest in reading the story would remain, I encouraged them to construct their own version of the story through the evidence in the pictures. So when we finally got down to reading the story, they followed with their fingers quite rigorously so as to compare the similarity and differences in thoughts. The reading was always a quiet and focused activity. In the process, they underlined all the interesting words that were either new or challenging to be discussed later.

Once the vocabulary had been examined and clarified, the children heard and followed the story a second time, only this time through my recorded voice. I made sure, I added the appropriate expressions gathered through the story punctuation.

On the second week, I always planned an additional activity to the story to help children exercise their analytical skills much needed in developing good reading skills. Here, I’d like to share a fun activity that I prepared for my students while reading the ORT stage 9 book, “The Litter Queen”.

The story rotated around a magical adventure that the famously familiar characters of the series embarked upon while on a picnic to the country-side. There they encountered the Litter Queen who used them to litter the beautiful country-side and enjoyed the ignorant behaviours of the people throwing their rubbish and spoiling the country-side beauty.

After a lot of thinking, I came to the conclusion that if they were to examine the story and characters and reflect on their learning, the best way to do it would be through a ‘trial in a make-belief courtroom’! I divided them into groups of six. The group had to work independently to come at a unanimous decision on whether the ‘ruining of the country-side’ was the responsibility of the people or the litter queen who controlled the thinking and actions of these people.

The vocabulary was key to this trial. The flashcards were pasted on the soft board. “Judge, Lawyers, Jury, Witness, Defendant, Evidence, Verdict, Penalty”. Each group was provided with a chart paper to present their case in whichever manner they wished. A lot of recyclable material like cloth strips, old coloured paper, newspaper and plastic bags were also given to each group to use their imagination and creativity to the maximum.

As I walked about the classroom, I could sense their strong debate on whether to blame the temptress or the tempted. “Kipper had no choice! She would have punished him harshly for not following her commands!”; “He did eventually come to understand his weakness!”; “No! He was just saved by the magic key which started to glow just in time to get him out of his misery! I would blame the Litter Queen who used him to destroy the greenery around!”; “And what about the time that they stopped at the fast food outlet? They threw their garbage out of the car window!”, “Only because the bin was full!”, “So, we shouldn’t make an effort if the bin is full? It doesn’t become right!”

The discussions were the true learning that had happened that day. Eventually, majority of the groups presented their trial in pictures on the chart framing a ‘guilty’ verdict for the litter queen who forced poor Kipper to commit the crime. They signed their names as members of the Jury. The penalties provided quite a lot of humour in the class! One group sentenced the Queen to a 100 years in a cell filled with rubbish and smell! Another one punished her by demanding her to clean the country-side and apologize to Kipper!  

Only one group out of four declared Kipper as the culprit, as he had the tendency to be lazy about taking care of the environment!

I allowed them their viewpoints and appreciated the art work that was finally displayed on our soft-boards in the corridor.