Lessons

Teachers have a very old fashioned style here.

When I teach, my thought is nearly always from the pupil's perspective. You tailor the lesson towards who, what and even when you are teaching. This is not to say that individual teachers do not have their own individual style and methods they prefer, but simply that the pupils relationship to the lesson is seen as fundamental to the whole exercise.

Lessons, then, need to be planned and thought through. I have been trying very hard to communicated this idea to the teacher who I am working with here. He cannot see beyond the content. Lessons have no start, no end, no variation and no rhythm. It is just content relayed through speech.

Some teachers can carry this off succesfully. But these teachers, while not proactive planners, are excellent reactors.  It takes a large amount of natural intuition (often disguised experience). But what they are doing is still fundamentally similar - responding to the signals from pupils about how the lesson is going.

I have tried both explaining this idea and demonstrating it to the teacher through my own teaching. I have made sure I taught content from the Indian textbook, to emphasise this is something he can do himself to improve his own teaching. So far, he has not seen it.

A common trait amongst Indians, unfortunately, is stubborn solipsism. This harms the application of this model in two ways. Firstly, a lack of empathy with the learner. Secondly, a resistance to learner oriented teaching as an idea.

I don't pretend to know even 10% of what there is to know about teaching. But I know too well what a bored and understimulated bunch of kids looks like, and his classes were that. Until he starts to see that as his challenge, rather than their deficiency, it will stay that way.

Apologies for something not so much about Kolkata but it has been something I have been thinking about.