Monday, June 15, 2009

How do i teach?

Once upon a time, I have criticize the use of OHP( Over Head Projector) in teaching, the real fault is not with the OHP but with the OHP sheet/transparancy sheet, because many just copy the content from the book into the OHP sheet. Once it is projected overhead, the students just copy the content blindly into their note books, where the words from the teachers mouth just fades away. When i started teaching, the black board and the diffrent colored crayons came to mind, fortunately in my school they had white board with black marker.

I was very happy with the white board and the black marker, untill the day my colleague Ann experienced a very bad incident in the class. she forget the black marker in an instance of hurrying to the class and used a green marker given by her class representative, after drawing a wierd layout of a medium size hotel for fourty minutes with her green pen on the white board, she found that the layout couldn't be erased. We tried all possible solutions and chemicals to erase it, and finally the white board turned into a green, black, grey color, which ended up in our useless storage room.

The fear of permanent marker, made Ann and many other teachers to use OHP , but still i was not convinced and went to class with neither marker nor OHP. The topic for that day was cuts of meat and i started with chicken, then with pork, lamb and beef. I was literally acting as a chicken in the class room using both my hands for the wings of chicken, i bended down to teach cuts of pork and other meats, exposing my thighs for ham and belly for bacon. i do not know how many understood and After solid fourty minutes , i was happy , that there were no cuts of frog in the syllabi.
Hardly very few learned to cut, so the next week i purchased a couple of chicken, and a demonstration even helped Subramaniya Iyer to enjoy cutting a chicken and then things concerned with the cuts of chicken became very clear to the students. But, with the pork, beef and other meats, i was not able to find any slaughtering house in the town. The alternative - a vedio about the cuts of meat, unlike the live demonstration, the video can be rewined as many times as possible till the students understands the concept.
Even now i hate the copy cat OHP/transparancy sheet or the one Mr.XXX use which is twelve years old( Don't he feel like updating? Or Is he lazy to the core?). and today with all the modern technology available ,with the use of ICT in education, the virtual learning and many.Its worth trying all possible methods . It is very much easy to criticize, in the end, how far you are able to make the students to understand the concept is all that matter.

HAPPY TEACHING AND HAPPY LEARNING.
An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't.

14 comments:

Unknown said...

i fell the way u teach is not at all boring sir?who is this MR.XXX?

Unknown said...

by the by nice pic sir!

sathish vasudevan said...

@ Anvi...........
Thanks for the coment on ma pic Anvi, i couldnt get a pig of beef/pork, and its good to guess sometimes about the 12 year old ohp,,, keep guessing and Happy Blogging

Flowergirl said...

There is a misconception when one has all the aids one can be the best teacher. The term "aids" is self explanatory. They are only to help teaching and they can never be the teacher by themselves. Slides, OHPs, Flash cards whatever be it, should be used appropriately and it is the responsibility of the teacher to do the rest of the talk. One other thing is that there are people who really don't know how to use these aids effectively unfortunately, they don't try to develop the skill either ..

Cheers!

by the way, why don't you add the follow list alongside the menu list..
thanks for stopping by..

Happy blogging ..

sherabz said...

i may not be wise enough to comment on ur teachings but what i feel is the interest of the learners... wether u teach in OHP or with borad markers, if the student is reluctant to learn... then there is no point in making them concentrate.... teachers using any method to teach dependson their interest... be it lazy method or a fun teachin and learning method but what i truly feel is the ethuisam of the learner...
ex: when i am interested... i catch every word u use to teach... AK 47 making the OHp presentations use to interest me but at times it puts me into a deep slumber with my eyes wide open ha haaa....
any ways hands up to all the teachers who made me what i am today... without u i wldn be able to write this words nor able to read what u have send me... thanks a million.... hope we meet again soon.. bye bye ....sherab

yusuf said...

you never became chicken in our class while u thought us the cuts of it...it would have been worth seeing you in a chicken avatar.. happy blogging...

Flowergirl said...

@ Sherbz:

You are absolutely right. Learner's interest is the raw material. If it is not there you cannot do anything. But if the teaching is bad even the most intelligent will lose the interest in learning or even from the subject. Btw, I appreciate you remember your teachers, but it could have been better if you have given that in a better English. It is more like striking with an AK47 at a wrong target .. ;)

Cheers buddy ..

sathish vasudevan said...

@flowergirl... your comments were
true indeed,the teachhing aids can never be the teacher by themselfs, but i see many who just depend on it/ sometimes /manytimes they just forget to update..... i am verymuch green to this profession, but until and unless one do not have the subject knowledge and a good communication method... none of the teaching aids will heplp... i'm learing a lot and will do my best for the students community.. THANK YOU VERYMUCH INDEED for your valuable comments..
HAPPY LIFE... and HAPPY BLOGGING

sathish vasudevan said...

@sherab...
if the students is relectunt to learn.. then whats the point? but here i'm tyring to create an intrest among the students to learn... do not know when i'll succeed.. but i will one day...
Comments from person like you is helping a lot and thanks a lot..
HAPPY BHUTAN...

sathish vasudevan said...

@ Yusuf
Its worth seeing me in a chicken avatar.... it happend yusuf .. me bending down ..my rigt and left hands as right and left wings of chicken.. my thigh as the drumstick.. but a video of the same cuts hepled the students more than my act in the class..... now tell me which one you prefer... a better understanding or a chicken avatar?

sathish vasudevan said...

From AARTI KALRA
hi sir
i dont know how to reply to ur blogs.
u dont need any aids for teaching i have always enjoyed ur classes. i still remember how u took cuts of chicken cant forget me being veg also i learnt and understood it so easily. thanks 2u.
anyways wil mis al tat life long but memories wont fade.
thank u for al those interesting classes as it was d biggest part of our enjoyment..
take care sir
bye

Jeanne Estridge said...

A number of years ago, when I was working for a large retail firm, someone wrote on the brand new whiteboard with permanent marker. A vice-president was in the meeting, and he calmly took a dry-erase marker and traced over the permanent letters with it and then erased with an eraser. It completely erased the permanent marker from the board!

I've tried it since, and it seems to work pretty well.

I guess that's why he was a vice president.

Anonymous said...

i know that Mr.XXX...but i'm sure the sheets are more than 12 years old...once during a class (XXX will not even allow us to go 4 piss that he even takes the interval time for his 'teaching') we asked XXX to give sheets and stop 'teaching'...he said "basically you cannot understand unless i personally teach with it"
the worst part is even the OHP sheets are readable only to him...
fortunately, when i forayed into teaching i followed teaching methods similar to mr.sathish's and not that xxx's....
anyway xxx in a way is better than sathish...while sathish dont allow us to sleep xxx was our mother!!!!!!!!!!

sathish vasudevan said...

Happy you left a comment and happy blogging and happy teaching
Arun
Wish you good luck in all endeavors