TheLogicalEducator

Safety and Sexuality Education in schools- a need of the hour!

An episode of Satyamev Jayate, on child sexual abuse

Few years ago, I watched an episode of the TV show Satyamev Jayate, hosted by the Indian actor Aamir Khan. I remember the gut wrenching feeling on listening to the traumatic and horrific accounts of adults narrating their sexual abuse as a child.

They were brave to have come out in the open and talk about it. The number of reported cases of child sexual abuse is too high. I wonder how many children never even get to speak up.

Child abuse statistics in India
Source: https://www.thebetterindia.com/48798/identify-child-abuse-report/

As a future teacher, I have the power and responsibility to not just ensure that children develop academically, but also ensure that they are aware of personal safety and sexuality, and that they would be able to cope up with any life crisis. Along with creating awareness and talking about various safety measures (including child rights, POCSO act, childline 1098 etc) we need to constantly build their self esteem and ensure that they develop a healthy body and self image, so that they are less vulnerable to abuse and feel worthy of protecting themselves. We need to build a space of respect, understanding and trust, so that children feel comfortable and safe and can communicate always openly.

Children get to know many things from various sources, including the internet. Sometimes the information may be biased, misleading, inaccurate or inappropriate. They have easy access to pornography, which may lead to them having a misconstrued idea of human bodies and sex. Thus it is of the utmost importance that the adults in their lives, including teachers to provide unbiased, accurate and scientific facts on the human bodies, sex, gender identities, sexual orientation, consent and sexual abuse, in a way which is appropriate to the children’s age and maturity levels.

Currently, Enfold India is conducting weekly training for us as part of the B.Ed. program of Christ University, where they are teaching us the basic facts on personal safety and sexuality and training us how to conduct such sessions in a school classroom. Such training should be given to all pre service and in service teachers so that they can conduct sessions in their classrooms and basically be more sensitive to students and would be able to identify and help their students in need.

Increase in number of private tuition = Decrease in quality of education?

I came across a news article recently which said India now has the highest number of students taking private tuition in the world, especially in Math.

I remembered my own school days, my mother used to help me with all subjects till 5th grade, then hired a private math tutor from 6th grade onward. I wanted her to continue teaching me math, but she said that secondary level math was beyond her, which I don’t think is true. Probably she wanted to hand over the responsibility of teaching math to more professional people, since it was one of the more important subjects, according to her. I was naturally interested and good at math. If I needed extra help, I think it would’ve been for subjects like Hindi or Social Science rather than Math. So, I used to sit with the math tutor along with my elder sister in the evening, few days in a week. I saw that my sister indeed needed extra help and motivation and the tutor lacked patience and empathy to help her.

In 9th grade I moved to a reputed private school. Few teachers, especially for math and science, would take private tuition in the evening for their own students in school. I personally felt that it is a unethical practice. I noticed that the quality of their teaching would not be good in school, but the students attending their private tuition classes would rave about their teaching there.

Now as a future teacher, I wonder about this often. A teacher, especially for math, faces a challenge of providing individual attention to each student. No matter how hard they try in school, there would always be few students who require extra help. Would it be feasible to help them in school after hours? During my internship, I observed that the math teacher would call in few students in their free hour or after the last period and tutor them. She used to call two different groups of students, one who needed help with the regular school syllabus, the other group who needed help in preparing for advanced Olympiads. This gave me some inspiration.

The staggering number of students taking private tuition makes me wonder, if the quality of education is declining. Are school teachers slacking in their jobs? Are the classrooms getting overcrowded and too diverse for the teacher to cater to most student’s needs? Are attention span among students decreasing in classrooms? What could be the distractions, dependence/addiction to technology, reducing physical and mental health in students? Are parents worrying too much and hiring private tutors without even knowing their children’s needs?

Students, Parents and Teachers need to communicate more openly and collaborate to strengthen the education system.

My first experience of school teaching

B.Ed. curriculum by NCTE mandates a 2 week internship period in the 1st year for pre service teachers, where they would be involved in school teaching. Usually, this is the first experience for a pre service teacher like myself, walking into a school as a teacher.

Last month, I interned at Delhi Public School E City. I taught Math to 7th grade students for 2 weeks. I was assigned the chapter The Triangle and its Properties. To prepare for the internship, I studied and analyzed the NCERT textbook and few reference books. After the unit analysis, I divided it into 6 lessons and wrote sequential lesson plans. I prepared some simple teaching aids like paper cut outs of various types of triangles, some cardboard models depicting the proof of few properties and browsed for videos explaining the background and various proofs for Pythagoras’ property.

It’s always nerve wracking to go to a new place with new people. But since the first day, both the teachers and students made me feel welcome and comfortable. The students were extremely enthusiastic and curious, they had a lot of questions to ask. Their energy elevated mine. I introduced myself, set the context and agenda, established few basic ground rules like listening to others when they speak, to raise hands in case of any questions or to answer questions. The students followed the ground rules for most of the time, with me having to reiterate them very rarely. I was impressed by the students asking “why” questions to some facts, which I never did myself. For example, a student asked why do the three medians of a triangle always have to be concurrent? I was pleasantly surprised, I looked it up online and tried to give a simple explanation in the next class. The students responded well to the teaching aids. The supervisors remarked that they were effective.

The group of awesome pre service teachers

We were a group of 4 pre service teachers interning in the school. We would observe our peer’s classes and provide feedback for their classes and receive feedback for ours. This system of peer feedback and guidance was really helpful for us, to identify our areas of improvements and to work on them.

Few challenges in teaching were classroom management (it’s difficult to maintain 100% class participation and expect students to follow the ground rules all the time), time management (completing larger portions in short periods), blackboard writing (neatly and legibly) and providing more personalised attention to all students (30+ students at a time). Maybe with more experience, it would be easier to overcome these challenges.

It was a wonderful opportunity to put some theoretical knowledge of teaching into practice, it was really amazing to have a glimpse of being a professional teacher. I’m eagerly looking forward for the next internship and finally being a full time teacher!

You want to become a teacher.. but why?

If I had a rupee for every time I have been asked this question, I wouldn’t exactly be a crorepati, but definitely a bit richer!

As with many young kids, I wanted to become an astronaut. I was fascinated with Tintin’s “Explorers on the Moon”, and real astronauts like Neil Armstrong and Kalpana Chawla. I had some other fickle fascinations, usually watching something on TV or other media, like being a meteorologist/storm chaser, paranormal investigator, pokemon trainer, wizard, illusionist, scientist/inventor, among many other things.

I liked to act as a teacher at home, I would write on my blackboard, teach something and give a test paper to my parents to answer and then I’d evaluate it with a red pen. I loved Math, I would usually act to be a Math teacher at home and sometimes liked helping some classmates with Math. However, I never actively thought of teaching as a career.

As I grew older, my aspirations turned more “realistic”, and more aligned to what my other friends were aspiring to be, and what my family wanted me to be- an engineer or a doctor. I chose to be an engineer as I’m very queasy when it has anything to do with blood and gore! I never felt a burning passion to become an engineer, but I figured that it would fetch me a decent salary, would be a comfortable desk job, it may bring opportunities to travel/settle abroad. So I went along with it. I got enrolled in a popular coaching institute for engineering entrance exams, went through the mill, managed to grab a seat in a reputed university, graduated college in 4 years and started working in the I.T. department of a global bank. I soon realised that, while I didn’t hate the job, I didn’t love it either.

Many batchmates were going for higher studies, mostly either MBA or MS. I decided to follow suit and got enrolled in coaching for the entrance exams. The quantitative aptitude section is based on high school math, I loved solving those questions, and loved to help others with it. After writing few exams, I didn’t apply to any college immediately. I paused and thought about it. I observed my team leads and managers, I realised that I wouldn’t want to be in those positions in the future, so there was no point in pursuing MBA/MS, in fact I felt like quitting IT.

I made a close friend, who was volunteering at an NGO called Make A Difference. I was drawn to the idea of volunteering and teaching underprivileged children. At his recommendation, I started teaching Math to a group of 5th grade students in a shelter home. It was challenging at first, because of the language barrier and my inexperience of engaging with children. But still, it was a highly satisfying feeling, after each class. It felt as if I was doing something meaningful, even though I wasn’t getting paid for it. The moments where a student understands something, learns something new, expresses appreciation, are truly priceless. That’s when I started connecting my passion for math and teaching children and realised that becoming a math teacher in a school could be a great career choice for me!

I came across something shared on social media, a Japanese concept called Ikigai. I knew that school teaching could be my Ikigai. Even though I would be paid lesser as a school teacher compared to IT, I would love it more, I know that I’d be better at it, and the world is in need of good teachers. There was no looking back, I quit my job, took a few months break and now I’m studying B.Ed., a mandatory qualification for school teachers in India.

Whenever I have told people: my family, friends and acquaintances, about my aspiration of becoming a teacher, they have asked in a shocking way, “Why a school teacher?”, and “Why switch to school teaching from IT?”. The short answer is “Because why not?!”, “Because YOLO (You Only Live Once)”. A longer answer is usually a version similar to the above paragraphs.

MAD: Making a difference in the lives of children one day at a time

I have been volunteering with Make A Difference (MAD) since 2016, as an Academic Support Volunteer (ASV). I teach Math to a small group of underprivileged students in a shelter, from 5th-7th grade, every Friday evening. I substitute for other classes occasionally, where apart from Math, I get to teach English and Science to students from 5th-10th grade. The focus isn’t just covering the school syllabus, but to aid their learning of basic math/arithmetic, English/communication, soft skills and even life skills.

The volunteers are encouraged to bring in various worksheets, hands on activities, puzzles, quizzes etc, related to the syllabus, to engage the students more effectively. We are expected to write a concise lesson plan with a prescribed format in advance for each class, which is reviewed by an experienced mentor. The volunteers and mentors meet before and after each class to discuss plans, strategies, feedback, suggestions and concerns. We also have occasional city level ASV training, facilitated by the Directors of MAD, who are highly qualified and experienced professionals in Education. We have an online repository of all the training modules and resources for easy access.

Apart from ASV, MAD offers various other roles and programs. MAD effectively caters to children from the age of 10-26 years old through various programs. The Ed Support program is for children in 5th-10th grade, the Transition Readiness program is for children in 11th and 12th grades, the Aftercare program is for supporting youths outside the shelters, college students or working youths. The TR and Aftercare program offers youths financial support, counselling and career guidance apart from academic support. MAD thus ensures that a child would be gradually integrated into mainstream society over a long period of time.

MAD has an elaborate and stringent recruitment process for volunteers. Every year, thousands of applicants are screened by the experienced volunteers, fellows and directors. Last year, I participated in the recruitment process. It was exciting to see so many applicants eager to spend their time and energy to volunteer with MAD. I referred few of my B.Ed. classmates who were also interested in volunteering. It’s a great experience to interact and work with a growing network of like minded people, dedicated towards a cause.

MAD organises an annual event for the children in Ed Support program, called Dream Camp. Last year I volunteered to be a mentor to a group of boys. We went to a resort in the outskirts of Bangalore over a weekend, the kids got to experience a stress free environment outside their shelter and usual hectic routine. We conducted few sessions where we talked about inner strengths and beauty, hopes and dreams, our journey through life so far and our ambitions for the future. The aim was to make each child realise their potential and for them to be able to dream big in life. It was a huge responsibility of taking care of 5 boys running around in a huge resort and a challenge to ensure that the children would have the best experience possible at the camp. But at the end of two days, both I and the children went away with a lifetime of fond memories.

I have seen a drastic improvement in the students of my regular class over the years, they have good arithmetic/computational skills, they can now understand and speak English, even though it’s not their first language. They seem more mature and respectful to me and each other. I still can’t say how much of a difference I have made in their lives, but surely, the children have made a difference in mine!