Teacher Talk: Teach the teacher

As a late entrant to the teaching profession, having spent the first 19 years of my working life as an insurance professional, I find the teaching-learning process endlessly fascinating. Children bring unique experiences to the classroom and there is as much for me to learn from them as they have from me.

In January 2016, I accompanied a group of senior students for their CAS project (Creativity, Activity, Service), which was in a village in Palghar District, off the main road, with village huts scattered on a forested hill and along a seasonal stream. We trekked from hut to hut over a large hilly area, crossing dry stream beds to fix solar lights in 50 houses. The work involved drilling holes in wooden hut supports, fixing solar lights and battery, giving a demo of how it works and instructions on maintenance and benefits. These lights would help the village children study at night, and improve general health as they had been using kerosene lamps whose fumes cause breathing problems in very young children.

I had one look at the electric drill, something I'd never once used all my life, and I figured that neither had the girls. It looked tedious and dangerous with the drill bit, so I took it upon myself to do the drilling, letting the girls hammer the nails in the drilled holes. As luck would have it, the drill broke in the very second hut we went to. It was a hot day, the drill was broken, there was no one around who could have repaired it, and I wanted to trek back to where the van was parked and abandon the enterprise. Not so the students. One of the girls had a close look at the drill, fiddled with it for half an hour, even as I was getting increasingly impatient and ready to leave, repaired it, tested it on a wall, and voila we were ready to light up yet another house!

We went on to install lamps for the rest of the afternoon. This time the girls wanted to do the drilling and let me hammer in the nails in the wall. It was hot, sweaty work but they were clearly enjoying the whole experience. We could see the joy in the family's eyes, when the solar lamp would light up in a hut. The first time ever that electricity was coming to their houses. This joy in turn cheered up the students and they trekked to the next house with even greater zeal. There was a steep slope at one point, and I was reluctant to climb up the forested hill to huts I couldn't see. Not so the girls, who walked ahead of me, leaving me no choice but to follow.

True learning takes place when we reflect on our experiences. As I look back at this incident, I can easily understand why it's such a teachable moment for me. My students taught me the value of embracing discomfort, taking risks and persevering. Faced with a broken drill, I immediately assumed that repairing it was beyond me, because I've never had a similar experience before. My students, however, looked at it as a glass half-full situation. The drill wasn't working anyway, if they fiddled with it some more, what possibly could go wrong further? In the process of experimentation they somehow got it right and we learnt the process of opening up a drill and inserting new drill bits in place of broken ones.

As a teacher, my life-long learning from this is that instead of overly protecting the young and making assumptions of what they can or cannot do, I need to respect their curious minds, let them take controlled risks and sometimes just stand aside and let them be the teacher.

(The writer is a Secondary English Teacher at Oberoi International School, Mumbai.)