art of teaching
I always thought of teaching as a very boring and thankless job but realized that the truth is quite different after got myself involved in some teaching business this semester. Every year, few second year students are appointed as tutors for the statistics course (which is a compulsary course for the first year students) so as to help the weak students. Because of my interest in the subject, I applied for the same and thanks to my good grades in statistics (the only subject), I was among the 6 chosen ones.
As per the guidelines set by the course coordinator (the tough guy, he-who-must-not-be-named) we were required to submit a sample mid-term and end-term paper in lines of the actual paper. For the first time, I realized how tough it is to set an original question paper and why many professors here prefer to "free-ride" by repeating the same question paper year over year. It was a nice expression, first I had to think hard to develop a problem and then had to solve it to make sure that it can be solved and an answer exists for the same. Anyways to our disappoinment, our first attempt was discarded as C.R.A.P. by lord voldemort and we were asked to "managementize" our questions. If you are thinking what the heck does that mean, let me explain by a simple example. If my question says "ram tosses a coin" then the equivalent managementized question should read as "ceo of wipro tosses a coin". I don't understand the rationale but since the decision was unquestionable, gave it another try and thankfully this time it was gracefully accepted. And with this, I also became the official tutor for the course.
Next came the most interesting part of this whole exercise. I am talking about the tutorial sessions. The idea behind this is to hold extra sessions for those who are finding it difficult to cope up with the subject. I was very apprehensive before the first session but it went on smoothly. I tried to give my only explanations for basic and conditional probability and it was nice to see that they found it useful. Only 12 turned up (in a class of 45) but that is fine as long as others are pretty confident about their skills. For the second session the attendance reduced to only 4 but this was actually much better than the previous one since I was able to focus on the doubts of individual students in a much better way.
Thing didn’t end here, we gave multiple practise problems/quizzes to the first year students and even held doubt clearing session the day before the actual exam. Even on the day of exam which was to start at 10:30, a student came and wake me up at 8 (I had gone to sleep at 3:30 and planned to wake up at 10:30). He had some doubt in a question and when I started reading the question, he felt that I am feeling sleepy and said “dada, aap please face dho ke aa jao, fir better rahega”. Anyways I told him that is not required and continued with his problem.
Finally when the paper ended, the 6 of us tutors were bombarded with all kinds of thanks messages from the juniors for our efforts and time spent. We had put up sincere efforts for this cause and it had turned out to be, if not full, a half course for us. So when our efforts were appreciated, it felt real nice.
Though I have no intention of becoming a professor in future, but all this had made me realize why teaching is still considered such a respected profession. It's not a boring job as I thought earlier, but a highly interesting and challenging one. I now remember how my dad always go fully prepared for his lectures to the medical students and when he comes back, there is a feeling of joy exuding from his very look. I am sure all good teachers feel pleasure in teaching and make the subject matter interesting and challenging for their students. It's tough to be a good teacher.
As per the guidelines set by the course coordinator (the tough guy, he-who-must-not-be-named) we were required to submit a sample mid-term and end-term paper in lines of the actual paper. For the first time, I realized how tough it is to set an original question paper and why many professors here prefer to "free-ride" by repeating the same question paper year over year. It was a nice expression, first I had to think hard to develop a problem and then had to solve it to make sure that it can be solved and an answer exists for the same. Anyways to our disappoinment, our first attempt was discarded as C.R.A.P. by lord voldemort and we were asked to "managementize" our questions. If you are thinking what the heck does that mean, let me explain by a simple example. If my question says "ram tosses a coin" then the equivalent managementized question should read as "ceo of wipro tosses a coin". I don't understand the rationale but since the decision was unquestionable, gave it another try and thankfully this time it was gracefully accepted. And with this, I also became the official tutor for the course.
Next came the most interesting part of this whole exercise. I am talking about the tutorial sessions. The idea behind this is to hold extra sessions for those who are finding it difficult to cope up with the subject. I was very apprehensive before the first session but it went on smoothly. I tried to give my only explanations for basic and conditional probability and it was nice to see that they found it useful. Only 12 turned up (in a class of 45) but that is fine as long as others are pretty confident about their skills. For the second session the attendance reduced to only 4 but this was actually much better than the previous one since I was able to focus on the doubts of individual students in a much better way.
Thing didn’t end here, we gave multiple practise problems/quizzes to the first year students and even held doubt clearing session the day before the actual exam. Even on the day of exam which was to start at 10:30, a student came and wake me up at 8 (I had gone to sleep at 3:30 and planned to wake up at 10:30). He had some doubt in a question and when I started reading the question, he felt that I am feeling sleepy and said “dada, aap please face dho ke aa jao, fir better rahega”. Anyways I told him that is not required and continued with his problem.
Finally when the paper ended, the 6 of us tutors were bombarded with all kinds of thanks messages from the juniors for our efforts and time spent. We had put up sincere efforts for this cause and it had turned out to be, if not full, a half course for us. So when our efforts were appreciated, it felt real nice.
Though I have no intention of becoming a professor in future, but all this had made me realize why teaching is still considered such a respected profession. It's not a boring job as I thought earlier, but a highly interesting and challenging one. I now remember how my dad always go fully prepared for his lectures to the medical students and when he comes back, there is a feeling of joy exuding from his very look. I am sure all good teachers feel pleasure in teaching and make the subject matter interesting and challenging for their students. It's tough to be a good teacher.
posted by himanshu agrawal | 6:21 PM
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