Teachers and Punishments: Paralleling the Twined Strings

Glittering eyes welcome me with cheerful smiles and faces full of joy and life. Every step that I walk after entering the gates of the school, I have children surrounding me to say a ‘Good Morning’ or just to ‘Hi Five’. It’s sheer joy to be able to reach to your teacher and being held with warmth. In return what I receive is immeasurable love, respect and courage. But as the day progresses, I encounter the sad stories of children sobbing in pain and pale faces that were so cheerful minutes ago. At the morning assembly the children are expected to sing National Anthem without even being taught the correct words. They sing hymns whose meaning teachers cannot explain because they’re a language we all don’t understand. The child’s parents taught him to walk but didn’t train him to participate in march-past or form a straight line during assembly. In class, a Grade 6 student is punished for not being able to calculate time, based on the latitudinal distance, while the same teacher is excused when she teaches Grade 6 syllabus to Grade 5 due to her mental confusion. A bright student is rewarded probably because he would be the next Einstein, while a low scoring student is ignored, not knowing, he may very well land-up being the first monster of his community. On being requested to write down their experiences and how they felt being in school, students gave responses. Here are 3 of those notes that they handed over to me. ‘I walk upto school daily and arrive everyday before my teacher reaches school. I love being here, my school. I’m punished by every teacher. In the last 9 weeks I have not left the school without being shouted, punished and warned of suspending. Yet I come. I love coming to school’ – Sunny, Grade 7. ‘Sir, you are nice and you teach very nicely. But when you teach, you speak very fast, so please don’t speak fast. And you shout at us in class, so please don’t shout.’ – Nilam, Grade 8. ‘When you give punishment, they are so painful.’ – Deep, Grade 8. On reflecting and pondering upon what the students were trying to say and their actions in class, I could understand a few things. Beginning with the positives, the optimistic person that I am, children just showered enormous love, just to convey that they trust me and have faith in me. They feel a sense of security, compassion and joy when I hug them, hold them and protect them from any injury. Sunny comes to school despite being punished or warned several times, is just to say that he’s much safer in school compared to the locality back home, where he could easily sway into anti-social gatherings or be abused. For others it’s the lack of joy and happiness, which they are able to get by coming to school. Yet others have only 1 mission, take you as the role model and transform themselves as they find no one worth admiring in their community. On the other hand when the child is being a distraction in class, what message is the child conveying? He’s very likely trying to tell what Nilam pointed out, that I speak at a pace that doesn’t match her absorbing capacity. As a result, either the student is interested in something else or just sits silent due to fear of being punished. When MPs can sleep in the Parliament while the Budget Session is in motion, what grave fault has the student done, if he goes mum because he understands nothing of what you teach. The student is just trying to convey to you that your method of ‘TEACHING’ is ‘CRAP’. Just because the student is unable to say that, he either gets distracted and distracts others or is disinterested in your class, but more interested in cutting a ‘1 inch’ eraser into a ‘hundred pieces’. The teacher in his inability to understand the messages and communication from the student is only venting out frustration. Punishment seems to be the only way out to make a student submissive to the incapacities and shortcomings of the teacher. Lack of empathy drives the child to be fiercer in his actions and silently loud about his disinterest. WAY OUT: A teacher training course after graduating is not sufficient enough to make a good teacher (with scams even here, Almighty save the teaching fraternity). Refresher courses at regular intervals of 6 months or a year are a necessity. Counseling sessions for teachers and appointments of a full time counselor in every school –the minimum the government should do – should become the priority. Performance enhancement training and performance based appreciation and rewards should be administered. The RTE Act under section 4 envisages, teacher training for students with special needs, which is the biggest reason for student distraction and disinterest. A teacher needs to realize, ‘You don’t always get what you wish for, You get what you work for’. So if I work towards every student in my class, I will be able to get every student. Instead of trying to cover-up the inabilities by punishing the students the teacher should become compassionate and submit to the shortcomings to the child. The student will show the way to solve the problem. The bottom line is, ‘It’s nice to be important, but it’s More Important to be Nice’. HAPPY TEACHING! AWESOME LEARNING!   Source: Companion