Teach thyself

 

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)