Days behind me!
I am retired.
I guess none would consider it when I say so, but yeah I am out of the job. I used to teach Physics to kids of age 11–14 yrs. It was fun, maybe too much fun that I miss it now. Every once in two nights, I dream of being back in the class shouting, “People, do you understand what I am saying?”
The thing about teaching is, It’s unlike everything I have done until now. If someone asks me how to teach, I can’t actually give them a protocol to follow. It’s a real thing, lively. No teacher knows how to teach until he steps onto the podium until he holds a chalk in his hand and is standing in front of these little devils…ehem, kids.
I think if someone says they do know how to teach, it could only mean that they are ready to take the kids on everyday adventures. A new day would mean a new adventure. How can anyone know what doubt could pop into any of the kids' heads? Unless I am not willing to listen to their questions, I must be ready to be bemused, startled, and stopped in my tracks.
A good teacher I think must also be a good storyteller. Isn’t teaching storytelling… Physics is a detective story, maths a story full of puzzles and games, and Social a story full of how systems of society emerged and must go on, English a story of word games and flirting.
It was fun for me to teach Physics. I once wanted to teach them Fermi’s method of approximations. It just was a random instinct thing to teach crazy stuff. I along with the kids calculated the number of biryani’s ordered in Hyderabad per day. And guess what, we were able to calculate it to the correct order (as in power of ten).
This one time, I was stopped in my flow cause someone couldn’t grasp a mathematical calculation, integration to be specific. I didn’t have time to teach integration entirely. So I took a little deviation to use the geometric methods of calculating areas. That approach was understandable to them.
I wanted to tell the kids that there is no single correct method of doing things. And in Science there definitely are many ways to get to the answer.
It was never in my intention to baptize kids into doing Physics. I just tried to show them how beautiful Physics is. I might have overdone it at times.
I love teaching. It’s not the role of a teacher as such. But the way it made me get involved, you know. I had a spark in my eyes when I taught. I used to feel like a kid trying to tell my experiences to an adult, trying to catch their attention. I would forget the time passing at times. The moments when I make the kids see through a complicated topic made me almost cry with bliss. It was so much fun. I absolutely have no words in my vocabulary to explain what I felt.
I had an advantage here as a teacher, cause I was teaching the most interesting subject possible, Physics. It was already creative and involving enough that to catch a student’s attention I had to do a bare minimum, start with an imaginative puzzle of sorts: Like ‘What do you think would happen if a car goes at 30kmph at a particular turn of radius 3m?’
It sounds a bit random at the start. Slowly I give them more context. Like it’s a circular turn. A body in a circular motion. Imagine a ball tied to a thread being rotated, what happens? As the context develops, kids start to see more of what’s going on. They come up with their own ways to calculate forces on the car, some would ask for more data, as in what about friction and so on. The class goes on…
At times I lost in telling them stories from my own childhood doing physics, or how I escaped from the wrath of a particular teacher I had, how I came up with ingenious ways of bypassing school regulations. I used to tell the kids how I tried to stay a step ahead of my surroundings so that no one disturb me when I do what I want to do. I believe that’s one of the aims of the Education system, to teach kids to stay ahead, own up to their actions, figure out ways to get what they want, how to take responsibility.
I think we can all sit and complain about the injustice everywhere. But complaining almost takes us nowhere.
I used to tell them how I learned new things. Read books on it, find out what kind of books to read, then experiment on the learned part, then integrate it into one’s approach to life.
Education is all about integration. But the way it’s done is divisive. We teach a kid to break a problem into parts and solve it. That’s all fine. But in the end, any solution must also include the integration of it into every other part of the situation. Cooking includes cutting vegetables, yes. But once cut, you must now add them all up in particular ratios and in a particular order. That’s integration. That’s wisdom.
Cut and add.
I was told that to be a teacher I must be dignified in my clothing, in my words, and in my actions. I never really got around it. For me, dignity lies in the integrity of the profession, not in my clothing. I was there to teach kids how to get better at thinking, approaching problems, at understanding the world around them. I think I was being decent in doing that.
I was told that I need to be disciplined. I wonder how the people telling me that never really understood what discipline is. Discipline is inherent to any being, it’s not something to be practiced. Hearts beat with discipline from birth till death. No issue at all. The only time it loses its discipline is when the body has a disease, or when there is mental turmoil. Such times are a result of the body reacting to the surroundings. Result of lack of proper understanding of one’s own task at hand and indulgence in something out of one’s nature like overthinking or bad healthy habits. Discipline is the quality of action when one’s action is aligned with one’s nature.
Isn’t that what a teacher must teach? to be in alignment with one’s nature, to realize one’s nature?
No, we don’t do that but instead insist on external discipline.
In the end, it’s not the fault of any one system, the Education system per se. I think any part/system in society is a reflection of any other part of society. No change or solution is full or completed unless it’s a change in every other part of the case.
I am well past bored of the constant doubts people raise about the system. We all never let any system function at its best. We always build limits on the level of involvement.
I might agree that we are in dire need of radical changes in the system, but I also think that the present system was never let to work at its maximum capability. We are the men with backup plans. We never make a single step without having a backup step in mind. We are afraid that what we do is never right.
We are not sure of the school we send our kids to, so we look for a backup tutor. We are not sure of the tutor so we look for backup online classes.
We never showed the kids to get fully involved in something without doubt and without fear. Aren’t we, the parents, teachers, adults, relatives, friends, aren’t we all an example to look up to?
We never fully live the moment, we never fully get involved in something, we never fully take a breath…and we expect the rest of society to do its best…how do you think it will impact a kid? What do you think it will teach them?
I loved teaching. Not cause it gave me the power of impacting kids, but because it taught me my own humble origins. It showed me how easily I can get manipulated by someone I look up to. It showed me my own mistakes of the past as a kid. It showed me to take up responsibility for my life.
In teaching kids to take up responsibility, I turned responsible.
In teaching kids to let go of the past, I started to live in the moment.
In teaching kids to not let others get into one’s heads, I started to not give a damn about what others think of me.
In teaching kids to follow their curiosity, I removed the clog in my vision.
In teaching kids to be creative, I started to cut down the mental boxes that wound me.
In teaching kids to give their best to the task at hand, I realized the way to Live.
I loved teaching, cause it was me who was being taught every day in those classes.
I loved teaching cause those kids were so damn contagious in spreading their innocence.
I loved teaching cause I was given a chance to stand there once and for all in front of those little pranksters, falling in Love.
In the end, well, there is no end to the way of living they all taught me. It's ongoing. I realized that Love, Truth, and Living are all but one.
To be alive is to love!
To Love is to be truthful to yourself, to everything.
To be truthful means to be sensitive to every nook of life’s offering, to be alive every moment.
Love is Truth, Truth is Life.
~Love, Truth, and Physics~
PGA.
