Making Your Classroom Come Alive

 “When was the last time you did something for the first time?” the professor asked and the whole class went absolutely dumb, their eye brows lifted into a knot of reflective thoughtfulness.

 Yes, this was the most engaging question to have been asked during a training session where I figured as one of the trainees for an annual teachers’ refresher course, a couple of years ago. Out of a very few answers that came up, not a single one seemed to have that spark of ingenuity to merit a beyond-norm educational endeavour.

 This question has everything to do with our approach towards our profession. Day in and day out, performing almost the same kind of activities as driven by the syllabus break-down, teachers often feel quite incapacitated to entertain any new learning enterprise with their students against some unintelligible fears. Once this run-of-the-mill practice gains momentum, it turns rather hard to heave yourself out of it. Consequently you, as teacher, lose the much desired vantage to look at yourself for a reflective review of your position in this scheme of work, which ought to be called tedious drudgery instead.

 Definitely there has to be a way out of it. Teaching is meant to be one of the most inspirational jobs, by the most inspiring individuals, who can, or at least, must look forward to finding the ways to help the learners actualize their untapped potentials. This asks for an infusion of revitalized energy into your daily diet of teaching, which you are going to dish out to your students in turn. Unless a teacher bears a head full of bright ideas to fill up those yawning gaps in between their lessons, he slacks on his ability to enthuse his learners for an all-round achievement of objectives set for the task in hand. Failing to stay spirited himself, a teacher runs the risk of depriving the students of their daily treat of energy essential to make learning look actually happening.

 

The one exclusive sign of thorough knowledge is the power of teaching.

Aristotle

 This is absolutely true. The centrality of a teacher in the whole process of education is quite well established. However, this ‘power of teaching’ stands compromised, and justifiably so, when it is made to operate in a control-shed kind of environment with the optimum focus on a maximum yield, be it the number of chicks in poultry, or else the number of digits on your result card, if seen in the schooling perspective. This is absolutely true of the whole education system in Pakistan. With quantities of marks displayed on the mighty murals outside the educational institutes, Cambridge and local boards alike, the key person behind this entire venture, has now become merely a steroid whose job is to grow his student’s brain into an oversized muscle.

All philosophies of education that support such teacher-centered approach in teaching, namely perrenialism, essentialism and behaviourism have gradually subsided to a more vibrant student oriented learning, where the classrooms have become more and more democratic. However, this is sadly not the case in Pakistan. With this unnerving pressure on teachers to win laurels, all the fun time has vanished somewhere. 

The most saddening part is that the institutions that boast of western-brand education here in Pakistan have themselves radically reverted to this mechanical approach in teaching, thereby rendering the classrooms almost lifeless.So, where will there ever arise an opportunity for the teacher to try something new in his classroom? The question will remain unanswered unless teachers are given the freedom to establish some lively metaphors for their classes, and treat these places, not simply as four walled, brick-layered, well-plastered and neatly painted monasteries, but as actual living beings bringing forth the supportive learning environment for each educational theme in hand. 

Not only will this catholicity of mind bring the teacher the required solace, as his authority is systematically devolved to his students and they become active partners in learning, and not simply the objectified entities. That is exactly when most of the yawning gaps can become the opportunities for creative interactions.