Teaching pedagogy: How to make students learn?......By Navpreet Brar.
Being from the teaching community and being an active part of students’ life, whom I teach, my responsibility is to make my students efficient learners. This is not a new statement to be made as every teacher’s aim is this but are, we all able to achieve this often? If not, where are we lacking?
I have been a very laborious child, that is I always had to spend a lot of time on studies and I took more time to understand concepts and then getting through all the exams and tests, though I was not a failure in academics but could perform better in some learning areas than others, maybe because I had more inclination and interest in those subjects in which I performed good or I got teachers who could develop an interest in me for those specific subjects.
If I have to mention here, I remember what impact my English teacher from grade 8 and my Biology teacher from grade 9 made on me. If today, I am a science educator and is proficient in English, I owe this to these teachers of mine. This is the story of every child whether the child is a meritorious student or an average child like me.
Being in the field of teaching and education for almost 8 -10 years, I have learned a very important thing that if you want to make your student learn or understand what you are teaching, you must move out of the textbooks, build a relation between the content mentioned in the book and the immediate environment of the child whether it is social, economic, religious or political, sensitize students towards our nature in which we all thrive and give them the opportunities to make mistakes, take the onus of the mistakes and freedom to correct those mistakes. We as educators can do all these things only when we approach the process of learning from student’s views. Think, how much would you understand as a child if you have been taught the way you are teaching your students. This will make you self-reflect and will give you an insight into what you are teaching and how you are teaching.
Teaching pedagogy has undergone a complete transformation from the times we were in school. There has been a revolution in methods of teaching where the student has become the centre of the teaching-learning process and I am so much in favour of this way of teaching because ultimately who is at the receiving end? It is the child and the pedagogy should be directed towards students only.
Other important aspects of the 21st century teaching pedagogical practices are, building trust with students, building a connection with the students, providing opportunities in each subject area for students to explore their calibre, set objectives which are measurable and achievable, and design activities around set objectives to be achieved. Our school management has started a ‘Teachers On-call’ program wherein students from government schools of a specified region can contact teachers from private schools to clarify their doubts in all the respective subject areas. I also received a call from a student of grade 6 and he wanted to clear his doubts related to a chapter of science.
We discussed topics like evaporation, condensation, filtration, sedimentation, decantation. When he asked me about filtration, I asked him, “Do you drink tea?”. He replied, “Hanji madamji, mein kaadha bhi peeta hun.” So, I told him to explain how he makes kaadha and how he consumes the same. He explained the procedure to me and I reverted, “Beta, every day you do filtration and you are saying you have not understood this.” He was taken by surprise and said, “Madamji, yehi filtration hota hai?” So, this is it. Another important aspect is simplification and relation of the complex terms to the day to day activities.
These kinds of teaching practices enhance creativity and the ability to think critically among students and help them become more informed and conscious individuals. The only aim of teaching should be to build a nation of well informed, conscious, and humble beings who can develop the nation by remaining connected to their roots.
(www.lifcourse.com)
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Navpreet Brar, Blogger
Navpreet.kuku@gmail.com
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