You are a conscientious school teacher, and you want to make sure that you do a good job teaching all your students so that they will enjoy studying and become successful. But part of the problem is that classrooms have become extremely large, so it’s very hard for you to provide individual attention to each of your kids. The problem is made worse by the fact that the programme has grown so much, making it hard to finish everything and hard to cover it all. This is why you give your students more homework so that they can catch up at home, but this often backfires because a lot of your kids will not do their homework—partially because they are poor and are stuck doing household chores, partly because they don’t have enough privacy, and partly because their parents aren’t well educated.
This means that many of these kids, even though they may be very bright, will continue falling behind class after class, so even though they could have done well if they had the right support system, they’re not able to understand what’s going on in school. And this means that not only don’t they complete their homework, but they don’t do well in class either because they don’t pay attention, and they get very poor marks in their exams. They start failing because they get labelled as duffers, and at some point, some of them will drop out. This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because they’re no longer interested in either attending school or paying attention because they are completely lost and befuddled and don’t know where to turn for help. These kids become rowdy and can be quite a disruptive influence, so you can no longer manage to discipline your class. It becomes harder and harder for you to manage these kids, but losing your temper is not helpful, especially when you know that they have academic potential, are quite bright, and would do well if they were more interested in studying. It breaks your heart to see all that potential being wasted.
You know that they would do well if you could spend more time with them or if they had an interested parent who could coach them, but this can be very hard to do, as a result of which these kids become problem students.
This is why many parents send these kids to tuition classes—to help them cope. This is actually completely useless because these classes are commercial enterprises that just help kids pass exams because they give them notes that they’re forced to cram and regurgitate during the test. Now that nearly all the kids are attending these commercial coaching classes, they pay even less attention in your own school classroom. You find this very frustrating and are no longer interested in teaching your class anymore because none of your students seem to be paying any attention to or caring about what you say. These students have heads which are crammed full of answers to exam questions, but they don’t seem to understand the underlying concepts or remember anything after the test is over! This becomes extremely irritating for you, especially when you have spent so much time trying to be an inspiring teacher. You realise that they’re not able to understand even basic stuff when they go to college, and therefore they have a hard time dealing with higher studies and are often struggling to keep up. They often fail to graduate or get a decent job, and you feel you have let them down.
There is an effective solution, thanks to the internet and the fact that educational PCs made in India are now extremely affordable and very powerful. You could suggest to their parents that they buy this and that 2-3 families could buy a PC together, especially if they live in the same neighbourhood, so they can learn from each other.
PCs are superb educational tools. They act like coaches and will supplement your efforts. There are many free resources available online today, including www.magnetbrains.com, www.learnohub.com, and www.missiongyan.com, which are mapped to the curriculum so that you can tell them what resources to use. They can prepare for the class in advance (the flipped classroom model), and this will make the classroom discussion much more interesting. You can use them as assistants who can help the other kids learn!
If they have doubts, even if you don’t have enough capacity to spend time one-on-one with them to clear them, you could encourage them to go to the right websites after school so that they can clear them for themselves. And when they study in groups, they will be able to learn and teach each other and become even better students!
There are many mock exam papers available online, so they’ll be able to prepare for exams and learn good study habits so that they will be able to score much better in tests. And if your kids start paying attention in your classroom and start doing better in their exams, this is going to enhance your reputation as a great school teacher! Your students are happy, their parents are happy, you are happy, and the principal is happy—and all because you told the parents to buy a PC! This acts like an assistant teacher for you, without your being physically present. And you can then encourage these kids to teach other kids (who may not have a PC) so that everyone benefits and the level of teaching and learning improves throughout your class, so that you enjoy teaching and your students enjoy learning! What can give you more joy?
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