Allhumdolillah! I am at a much better place since my last post with series of lab tests, utlrasounds, a mammogram and some other really scary tests, and a gut wrenching anxiety of results. I am doing well thankfully everything was clear except low iron levels with vitamin d3 deficiency. These deficiencies are now on their way to recovery. It is worth noting that I have been struggling with intense brain and physical fatigue since 2019 but not a single doctor was able to identify my problem. Once somebody is diagnosed with depression or anxiety then every health issue they complain about is looked from the psychological lenses. Nobody asked me to check iron, vitamin b12 or vitamin d3 deficiencies even my mum who is a dermatologist always assured me that I am fine and this weakness is just a phase. It was a phase alright, it engulfed almost 8 years of my life pushed back my career and research ambitions. This is not the case alone with me but there are many people who silentl...
I saw this amazing quote by
Albert Einstein and I think it explains in one brief sentence the entire of discipline
of teaching.
We have either direct
experiences or indirect experiences when we met teachers who are wonderfully
educated, and I say this with the deepest respect for all the teachers, but some of them start from being moderately
complicated and end up being extremely complicated.
We always think that it’s us
who are unable to understand the complexity of the subject but today I realize
that the concepts of that particular teacher are unclear to her/himself.
If you do not understand
anything clearly yourself, you simply cannot explain it anyone else, rather it
is in teaching or any other subject.
I am not a numbers person and
honestly my mathematics is pretty scary. In tenth grade when I had to prepare
for maths exam, I wasn’t exactly feeling happy. One of our family friends
recommended to us a Mathematics teacher.
I do not know whether he had
any magical power or guidance by a genie but I actually scored 100 out of 100
in maths, and I fell in love with the subject.
Years later when I started to
teach myself, I understood that my respected Maths teacher neither had any magical
powers nor there was any genie involved because he did not need either of them.
Because what he possessed was the gift of teaching. He knew all the ins and
outs of the Mathematics so well that he tailored the subject according to my
grasping ability.
My teacher knew that I was a words
and story oriented student, so he actually taught maths to me in the narrative
style. He taught me all kinds of questions and all the ways in which any mathematical
problem can be asked, I practiced every single one of them till the point that I
ate and breathed mathematics. And Voila’!
He was extremely strict,
brutally honest and amazingly sincere to his profession and all his students;
and trust me when anyone has all these ingredients in them they do not need any
other power.
Teachers need to appreciate that
teaching is a special gift and everyone is not fortunate to be blessed with
this opportunity; but before you decide to take teaching as a profession you
need to grasp your subject very well because ‘you cannot give what you don’t have’.
Every child is not same, everybody
has their own gifts and it is the teacher’s responsibility to teach respecting
their students’ unique qualities and talent. If students complain that they
cannot understand the subject because it is very difficult, in my opinion that
is a wake-up call for the teacher.
With most respect for all the
teachers…
Sonya Syed. (Day 492)
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