Teacher’s Day is a significant moment in time when for once a teacher’s role is being evaluated and listed at official functions, particularly those hosted by the Government. Private school teachers remain the most underpaid and retire without any benefits yet there are high expectations from them. This unequal system needs to be addressed if we are to improve educational outcomes which currently are abysmal with many students in rural Meghalaya preferring to remain out of the confines of a suffocating classroom and work for a living at an age when they have not even reached adolescence. Come September 5, and we have a ritual where a Government programme is organised; some teachers are felicitated and awarded and the rest have to listen to the drone of speeches from the podium. In their respective schools, more so in private institutions, students pay their tribute by way of performances and recitations, all intended to make teachers feel good at least on this single day in a year.
How meaningful would Teacher’s Day have been if students were given a free rein to speak about both the strengths and weaknesses of their teachers through a series of role-acting. Would teachers be open to seeing both their virtues and their flaws since they are after all human and cannot be expected to be without faults? Would that exercise help the teacher to change tack and be a better teacher or would that instead be taken as impudence? Teachers must know that students speak of them behind their backs. While they praise some teachers for their communication skills and expertise on the subject, they also complain of others whose subjects they find difficult to understand. With no two-way communication between students and teachers, how will a teacher’s flaws ever be corrected? And if a teacher carries on unsuspectingly with the same sterile method of ‘teaching’ to students who are today so technologically advanced they can find out answers in a jiffy, how will educational outcomes ever improve?
Today the teacher is more of a mentor who will fill in the learning gaps. And this is where personal interface with students is critical. There are slow and fast learners so comparing one student with another is mean. A slow learner should feel free to ask questions and to ask the teacher to repeat the explanation. For that the teacher has to have empathy. Increasingly the role of the teacher today is that of a facilitator who will throw up a topic for discussion and let students give their views. This is active learning since each student has to think of an answer or at least have a view of the issue discussed. The teacher’s role would be to ensure that everyone participates and that some students do not get into a shell because they are intimidated by the topic. Above all, this sort of discussion ensures that an issue is seen from many different prisms. It encourages cooperative learning which is the antithesis of competition and of one emerging the best and the others being made to feel like failures. If Teacher’s Day helps teachers understand themselves better and open to learning it would have been a meaningful observance.
