Teaching tips: Teachers learn ways to make classrooms more interesting for their students

KARACHI:

Unlike other panel discussions, this one started with the audience. One query after another, one observation after another, teachers from Orangi Town, Malir and other parts of Karachi wanted to know more about how to get their students involved in reading and writing in the classroom.

Teachers from private institutions, madrassas and government schools sat together for a session titled ‘Teacher’s voices: What promotes and inhibits reading and writing in classrooms’ at the fourth Teachers’ Literature Festival on Thursday. They asked why their students failed, how to divert their attention from the television towards book and how to built their confidence. They were all ready to dig deeper and look for answers that would help them run the classroom more efficiently.

All these questions were noted down by the panel, Zobaida Jalal, Rumana Hussain, Nargis Sultana, Zubeida Mustafa and Baela Raza Jamil. The session was moderated by Mohsin Tejani. The panel responded to the teachers’ queries with their own observations and personal experiences. “We are living in such a stressful environment that even the teachers are getting affected by it,” said writer Rumana Hussain.

Zobaida Jalal, a former education minister, reminisced of the time when she was a teacher herself. “Coming from a rural background, we started a school in 1982,” she said. “My sister and I started teaching the older girls first so they could teach the younger ones. Soon the numbers went up to 400 plus.”

She added that it was the way one went about teaching that mattered.

A teacher complained that society had conditioned students to think of rewards and grades. “They don’t just study for the love of the subject anymore,” said the teacher. Another teacher said that it was important to have an integrated learning system till the fifth grade rather than having separate subjects.

Zubeida Mustafa, journalist and educationist, stressed on the importance of a basic language to ensure better learning.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, February 27^th, 2015.