REFLECTION 2 : WAR VERSUS PEACE IN CLASS
WAR VERSUS PEACE
A 15-year-old child's personality is not a result of few days, few months or few minutes. Each and every minutes, each and every year, each and every person matters a lot in creating child's personality. Child's behavior reflects his or her surrounding more or less.
When a child undergoes for a longer period of personality- building-process and reach to the certain age of adolescence, then they create a kind of boundary around them which is very hard or difficult to penetrate and to enter. And may be this is the stage, which we as a teacher quotes - a stubborn child. And possibly we are wrong because this is the age where Child's personality is too delicate to handle. Their personality is too much fragile at this stage. Possibly it could be difficult for a teacher to earn their faith. So as a teacher one should not be judgmental for students.
For every teacher, his/her teaching experience actually matters. When I joined a new school, my first batch was actually very difficult for me to handle. May be my experience was less. Initially, I used to lose my temper frequently. Gradually I tried to read my children's mind set. I started looking every situation with their perspective. And this is how, to some extent, I have learned how to handle my Class of 40 students where each child is different from each other.
In my teaching experience I have encountered many cases where I found that each child in his or her opinion is always right. A child never finds himself on a mistake. Probably a child's behavior has a strong influence of his or her background. The most notorious child of the class could be the one who later on respects the teacher the most. The most indiscipline child could possibly be a successful businessman in his future. A truant could be an IAS officer in future. So we cannot judge a child's whole personality and behavior just with few incidences.
In a class, a child may seek for acceptance. When they don't get this acceptance they behave in a rebellious way. This rebellious behavior could be his anger or frustration. Therefore a teacher must keep calm and patient enough to read the children's mindset and to understand the whole situation before reacting. After all each child has a beautiful heart inside, which could be delicate enough to be handled. So we should handle them with care.
We all accept the fact that children come to school to learn but sitting at one place for six hour could be extremely difficult for those children who are highly energetic. Children are basically like little birds who wants to fly freely in the open sky. If we encage them they will not be happy. Similarly, a child encaged in a classroom for six hour can't be happy enough of sitting for whole six hours. So, learning should be done in different ways such as flipped classroom, activity based learning along with some curricular activities. Such activities will add-on extra spices to their six hour learning which will make this teaching- learning process fresh and fun-filled.
Therefore, as a teacher I can say that a teacher is just like a gardener who keep on doing timely pruning of the baby plant to make it healthy and help it bloom into a beautiful flower so that it can bear fruits in future.💫
By - Mohini Rai