Teaching to learn

Trust that you are doing well, and staying healthy along with your families/friends. As the governments across the world eased restrictions that were brought in over the last two years for containing the spread of CoVid, some areas continue to record new cases. The world is not yet free of the infection. As we move ahead, do continue to follow safety protocols whenever possible, and maintain own discretion for masks/social distancing/hand hygiene.

India, being a land of festivals has its own fair share of festivals to fill the entire calendar year and beyond. However, few days on the festival calendar provide more meaning to the purpose than the celebration/rituals themselves.

During our childhood, at school, there was always a favourite teacher and a most feared teacher. Most feared due to being strict, adhering to rules, and being a taskmaster. Favourite for speaking sweetly, not admonishing us in particular, getting more marks in the exams and several positives for ourselves. Our favourite need not be everyone’s favourite, and our most-feared definitely not the same for everyone.

Has the thought of entering the teaching profession entered your mind at any stage?

If the answer is yes:

What was the driver for the thought?

Few reasons related to current workplace tensions might drive one towards the thought. However, this thought alone would never suffice to drive towards the decision/thought of entering the teaching profession for various reasons:

Far less lucrative than one’s current profession
More stakeholders involved than the current job
Entail more responsibility (many students’ futures are in our hands)
Relevance to current world scenario is of utmost importance, and so on, so forth.

After crossing all these big rivers, and huge mountains that help throw shade on the profession, there are bigger gaps that need filling in order to satisfy the needs of the profession completely.

Most of my most revered teachers (favourite teachers of another kind J ) held one thing in common setting them apart from the rest:

An open-minded approach to receive questions, whilst patiently gathering themselves to address the crowd of students, proceeding to appreciate a question (however silly it might be), providing an answer to the best of their ability, and most importantly, accept when they do not immediately know the answer to the question.

Beating around the bush for a question one does not know an answer to is never the best option. Attempting to project presumptuous knowledge is more dangerous than attempting to salvage the situation by accepting no prior knowledge to answer the question.

Such teachers grow in stature because of their humility, honesty, integrity, and a willingness to learn. The even greater teachers understand the below point before they step into the teaching shoes every single day:

In order to teach, I must be ready to learn.

The mindset is the main trigger, and in my humble opinion, the major driver to become a good teacher. And even more important, becoming a teacher does not need to start at school or at university. Teaching can happen at home, at your workplace, on the playground, on the streets. Teaching can happen at any place that has two hungry minds, one hungry to consume new information, and one hungry looking for different information. Teaching, driven by the challenge of learning new concepts is the most satisfying action/profession there could be.