Teacher...teacher...

I think nothing in my training prepared me for the classroom of today! Many of my colleagues will probably attest to that statement. You walk into a class of 30 odd students. You proceed to teach. You tell the class to take out the required books....that will probably take some time.
Then lesson begins....ooh I forgot to add. You can't teach verbally too much in many of the classes cos many of the students will start to talk at the same time. To keep the silence, the best way is to start writing something on the board and tell the class to copy. Peace and quiet....as you continue on the board or LCD. But even before the copying is done, the sounds of conversation begins. Then you start to explain. But as you talk, they talk.

There will be 3 apparent groups. The first group is the minority...usually 3-6 of them. They will try to pay attention.The second group will be those with the dreamy eyes...glazed and faraway look. The third group will be those who will disrupt the class and they will have their conversations as you teach, oblivious to the repeated calls for silence and displaying a nonchalant attitude. The third group usually starts out small but grow as the year progresses. And the joke is, you can try to appeal to their sensibility about the importance of school but you will most likely get no where.

And teaching them...it's best to keep to the minimum where such students are concerned. The more you try to make them understand, the more noise they will make. The less you try to impart, the quieter they will be. In fact, sometimes they are quieter if you don't teach. Very often we are tempted to do just that...not teach. But our conscience usually gets the better of us, our memory board shortcircuits (I supposed) and we'll try to get some work done again in the next lesson....and the vicious cycle begins again. It is very taxing and tiring!

So what is wrong here? Teachers? Students? School? Curriculum? I cannot remember my own school days being like this. Maybe because my own experience as a student was rather limited to just the compliant students. When I underwent training to be a teacher, they taught us all the pedagogy and psychology stuff. Many of us have tried the soft methods....we've not much choice here actually. But my own conclusion is this...the old proverb probably still holds true...spare the rod spoil the child. You can try to 'psycho' a child....it's not much use. At some point, discipline still must play its role...and it's a prominent one. My two sen this morn!