In an ideal situation, children and teachers are mentally together. And, when they are mentally together they learn. Learning is inversely propositional to the mental gap between the children and the teacher. Who has to change in order to reduce the mental gap, the children or the teacher?
The teacher’s mental gap widens with the child. Let us consider the story of Ramayana. If we critically analyse the values of Ram in Ramayana, we can directly connect with the values of the mind of a teacher.
Who was Ram? Was he a king? He should have been, but he was asked to leave the kingdom and live in the forest for fourteen years. What did he take with him? He took nothing from the palace but led a secure and safe life in the forest.
A teacher needs to be similar to Ram in Ramayana. Like Ram, the teacher in a classroom should have sharp skills of understanding and observation. He/she should sacrifice for the righteous characteristics of the children as they learn concepts and contexts. She/he will never allow her/his children to be misguided by anyone.
Teaching needs to go beyond concepts. How sharp the teacher is on his/her concepts depends on how much the teacher reads. Teachers have to come out of the monotony of repeating classes. Every class has to be different from the previous one by his/her own creativity that works around the sharpest understanding of a concept. Teacher needs to have an ever-reading mind. He/She must never stop reading in order to be aware of all that happens in the world. Reading helps teachers to connect to the concept that you are going to teach to the children.
A teacher not only teaches but also protects his/her students like Ram in the Ramayana who is a giver and does everything for others quite contrary to Ravana who is a taker and does everything for himself. Teachers are not takers but givers. They teach, care and protect their students. In the act of protecting and giving children what they want, teachers gain the trust of their students.
Honest failures are celebrated by a teacher. If a teacher knows how to celebrate his/her own failures in a classroom, all the children will be with him/her. But if a teacher is not willing to accept a failure, then they cannot learn.
For instance, if a husband is willing to celebrate his failure with his wife, without any ego barriers, that home will be the happiest home. Likewise, if the wife is able to celebrate a failure with her husband, that home will be a happy home. The minds of the husband and teacher need to merge. In the same manner, the minds of the children and the teacher should merge into each other because a teacher cannot bring in a concept, a context, or a skill into the classroom unless the mind-set of the teacher and the children do not merge into one The teacher and children together shall have a happy journey creating happy classrooms.
So, who has to change? Teachers or students?
