It’s been long since I wrote my last blog, it’s a bold statement for an HR guy to make but yes, I have been busy with work. Moreover, I was spoilt for choice, so much has happened in the recent past on which I could have shared my “Special comments”, that, I didn’t know where to start. Finally, I decided to start a series of blogs, which will act as my “VIRTUAL WISH LIST”, and I will start with my views on something that touches every literate human beings life and something that definitely features on my “Things to do before I die”………. “Becoming a Teacher”
I come from a family of teachers……….. My grandparents were professors, my mom is a teacher and my father has done fair bit of teaching in his 3 decade long career and still continues to do so…. Simply put teaching is in my genes, having said that I am terrible at it. With little teaching experience that I have got in the last few years I have been able to grasp a few things:
----- To be a good teacher, one has to be a good student… that explains my terrible teaching skills
----- Being patient is the biggest virtue for teachers…my zodiac sign does not help me here at all
----- Teaching is more difficult than learning the same thing
----- Teaching requires special skills…. It’s not everyone’s job… definitely not mine
----- Teachers are born… one cannot be made a good teacher by training
----- You can have limited knowledge and still be an excellent teacher and can have all the knowledge in the world and still really suck at teaching
----- And lastly ….if done with the right spirit. It’s the most satisfying job in the world… that’s the HR in me speaking…
So what makes a good teacher? As my friends tell me … “a good teacher is someone who can teach a topic down to the level understandable to the lowest capable pupil, a good teacher is someone who can generate interest, can develop a willingness to learn. Teacher is expecting things on a silver platter if he wants a willing, intelligent student. That makes him redundant then... this student will more than help himself!”
Anyone can teach a brilliant student and claim to be a good teacher; the challenge is to make an average student achieve what he himself thinks is unachievable. The task of the excellent teacher is to stimulate "apparently ordinary" people to unusual effort. The tough problem is not in identifying winners: it is in making winners out of ordinary people.
As my friend concludes, “Capabilities and caliber differ from one to another... if people can overcome dyslexia to learn and achieve what they want to... why cant anyone else? At the end of the day... ask yourself... how much of your student's success will you attribute to yourself... that much of the failure will also be yours”…
