Life

Brick on top of brick. Carefully. No mistakes there. Everything formed as planned. One storm and it is all gone.

The student becomes the teacher!

It's only about a month now since I started teaching, so in a way I have way too little credibility to be talking about the art of teaching. But deep inside I feel like I have been doing it for years, and from that place comes this post.

Teaching sort of clicks with me, and when I'm in my class in front of 40 odd students, I actually feel like I'm in my element there like nowhere else. Not to say that the ride has been without challenges so far, drawing me in for the ease and comfort of not having to exert myself. On the contrary, its been a roller coaster ride, replete with adventures and surprises, both pleasant and unpleasant, and a lot of hard work, every weekday for the last one month. When I look back, however, what I see is satisfaction in work like never before and my heart swells with a sense of fulfillment. I have been extremely fortunate to have been allotted subjects very close to my heart. It is hence actually a matter of joy to get up and go to work every morning. Now there are several things about teaching I have learnt in the last one month which I would like to share. Since I was a student myself 6 months back, I like to believe I have pretty good insight into what students like and dislike, and hence a few tips for beginner teachers:

Firstly, love for the subject shows quite easily, and a teacher's passion in the classroom can be infectious. Students automatically respect teachers who love their subject. Teaching becomes ever so much more engaging and enjoyable, for both teacher and students, if the teacher is a person who is passionate about what he/she teaches. A person who doesn't love academics has absolutely no business becoming a teacher.

Secondly, teaching is performing. It takes a lot of confidence to be on the other side of the table, every day, with the same set of people who grow to know you more with passing day. If one enjoys being the center of attention for a prolonged time or loves putting up a performance in front of an audience, teaching becomes all the more easier. If the thought of dazzling one's audience and holding their attention for about an hour gets one nervous, teaching probably isn't for them.

Thirdly, students' performance has to do with both teacher and student variables. Its easy for beginner teachers to feel bad if a large number of students don't turn up for exam or don't do as well as anticipated, but one has to keep in mind that an excellent teacher can have bad students just as an average or poor teacher can have excellent students. 

Next, a beginner teacher must be, above everything else, humble and honest. There might be times when the teacher fails to answer a question put by a student. In such cases, it is always imperative to say without getting defensive that she would remember to look it up and answer it the next day. Holding the assumption that the teacher should know everything can prove to be dangerous. Students easily find out if a teacher is knowledgeable, and pretending to be what one is not may not be the best way to gain respect.

Furthermore, its far easier to be a teacher today than it must have been a couple of decades back. With the technology we have our hands on today, both preparing for class and teaching in class, take less effort than they would without the help of technology. If one has access to such resources, it would be foolish to not make use of them in one's teaching efforts. There are ebooks that can be sent to students to read before or after lectures, lecture videos of reputed universities and powerpoint presentations prepared by other lecturers free to download for teachers to prepare lecture notes from, and if the college has required infrastructure, a variety of unconventional teaching aids that can used in the classroom. Openness to technology and the desire to go the extra mile could make all the difference in students' perception, say between being a regular novice teacher and a young teacher who does things very few other teachers in the college do! 
 

Most importantly, teaching is all about being a learner. To be able to explain something to the class, one has to be thorough with the subject material and anticipate most doubts and questions that could arise from the material, and prepare accordingly. Coming to the class unprepared is extremely unprofessional and must be avoided at all costs. Students appreciate being asked to give feedback and a beginner teacher would do well to take all negative feedback in her stride, and strive for improvement constantly.

That's all for now. More will come along as I teach and grow some more. If you're a teacher too, please do share your experience!

Roughing it out with Writer's Block

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I will be honest; I haven't written anything since long (except for various product campaigns to earn some extra pocket money) because I have wanted to write something profound, only profound, and have patiently, way too patiently and passively, waited for inspiration. 

I have wanted to write something that would match posts in my previous blog- an aesthetic love poem or a moving short story with a social/political subtext perhaps or at least a decent social commentary. I have wanted to inspire the same depth of feeling in my readers, and in myself, that many of my previous works did. I have wanted my posts to be food for thought, and not just a one-time read. 

I have often browsed through both of my blogs, gone through some of my previous works and have been daunted. I have sometimes wondered how could the same person have such a chronic writer's block going on! After all, do I not still have the same muse? Am I not still in love, and in awe of God's brilliant creation? Am I still not a psychologist, a feminist or at least someone who reads books? I still have all the fodder I need! I could definitely do book reviews, if not anything else. Then it hit me. Though I may have lacked in inspiration, I have also lacked in pro-activeness. 

I don't remember the last time I sat in front of my laptop, doing absolutely nothing, staring into the screen, attempting to conjure up something to write. I guess I wasn't even aware that I had give up by not lifting a pen before some great inspiration flooded me. Who is to say that inspiration has to come first, and then the pen has to touch the paper? Who is to even say that I haven't missed moments of great clarity and imagination because of not penning down my thoughts immediately? 

Writer's block is an evil monster, all the more because it is clever. It makes one feel as if there's nothing wrong in waiting for the perfect moment of synchrony. It makes one forget that sometimes, one has to sweat it out, and inspiration present or not, go ahead and work to create the perfect moment. All of one's works need not be pearls. Even Shakespeare has critics. Lastly, this.

A Sweeter and Wiser Alternative

In today’s age and time, people are more conscious than ever of their weight though ironically obesity has never been more prevalent in the youth worldwide than it is in the present. There is rampant body-shaming on one hand, which is one of the contributory factors to several eating disorders, and on the other, a majority of the world’s youth leads a sedentary lifestyle and consumes high amounts of junk food on a daily basis. What we can’t seem to find is ‘balance’. At least a lot of us.

Now that summers are here, this lack of balance becomes all the more evident. Suddenly crash diets are the in-thing. Living only on juice or soup etc. becomes a fad. After all, one needs to fit into one’s summer clothes! Sometimes I wonder whether we are supposed to change our bodies to fit clothes or clothes should be made in accordance with our fit! When we are in our 20s and early 30s, we may not realise what such crash diets do to our body since our body is young and has enough ammunition to keep firing without being loaded much, but the effects start becoming evident as we age- early ageing, loss of memory and concentration, aches in joints, lowered immunity resulting in catching diseases easily and not recovering fast enough etc. We start reaping what we had sown in the first place.

Anyways, though I am vehemently against dieting I do believe in making dietary adjustments so that one eats healthy food and avoids unnecessary unhealthy items. Sure I believe that one need not become a size zero to look beautiful or feel good but that is no endorsement for eating whatever comes in sight and making oneself vulnerable to a whole array of diseases. The word is ‘balanced diet’.

There are simple things one can do within one’s budget and without compromising on taste, say adding fiber and reducing sugar. Fruits and veggies eaten raw, as opposed to as juice, add a great deal of fiber to our diet. As for sugar, once can totally replace it with something sweeter yet healthier- honey.

Honey is one of those things that can totally make an ordinary dish taste delicious without making it unhealthy. In fact, one can go on a honey diet, if you will. Honey added to lemon juice and lukewarm water makes for a great start to the day- it flushes out toxins and even helps in weight loss when taken regularly for months. Milkshakes, smoothies and other summer drinks can be easily made healthier and tastier by substituting honey for sugar. Honey added to chilled milk and mint leaves makes for a simple yet delicious drink for the hot afternoons. Other than being a replacement for sugar, honey has several medicinal properties too- taken with cinnamon powder, it helps in lowering cholesterol and preventing heart attacks as well as in checking weight gain. All in all, maintaining a balanced diet makes way more sense in the long term than going on crash diets and honey can help you to immediately start making your diet more balnced. Go get your jar of the Sweeter and Wiser Alternative!

Mamma can find everything!

Every time I don’t find something I’m looking for, I terribly miss my mom. My mind wanders to my childhood days when I had not moved out for higher studies and mom was always there to the rescue. My mom had this uncanny knack of finding things effortlessly that everyone else had failed in spotting, and I had the tendency to forget where I kept my stuff. That made for some very interesting happenings at home every other day.

I always made sure that I had exhausted all my faculties of searching and was left with no other recourse before I admitted defeat and called my mom. While marching in, mom used to declare that I would be in for some good scolding if what I had been looking for unsuccessfully for hours actually was just lying around in the open, like always. I used to be outraged and protest that this time the object I was looking for was definitely not out in the open.  And then upon magically fishing out the lost object in the blink of an eye, mom used to tell me, every time, for the umpteenth time, that I’m practically blind! It brings a smile on my face every time when I remember those moments.

Image credit: http://goo.gl/NEHs2I

I of course used to vehemently tell mom that my eyesight is perfectly fine and it is she who has magical power of spotting things. She used to laugh it off but it always managed to bring down her irritation :D

Now that I think of it, I realize that my mom was my troubleshooter in every respect. She had magical powers for everything, like I guess all moms do. She was my go-to-person who had the solution to all my problems, always. She donned multiple hats and was equally adept at everything! She was the one and only expert I ever needed!

Image Credit: www.redeeminggod.com

At 23, I feel all grown-up, living alone in Mumbai and supporting myself financially but when I look up to my mom, I understand what it means to be grown up really and how far I am from reaching there. Taking responsibility of others’ well-being and always being there for them- I guess that’s what being grown up actually is, and no one does it better than my mom.

I thank Godrej, the most widely trusted expert when it comes to hair color, for this post as their campaign this Mother's Day inspired me to recollect my memories with my mom, my first expert, and share them here. I would like to end my post with this image that hits the bull's eye perfectly.

Image credit: https://www.pinterest.com/kinsahealth/you-have-to-laugh/