I really liked the book “Is your child ready to face the world?” by Dr. Anupam Sibal. This book has taught me how to be a real teacher, a teacher who sees her students as her own children and works for their all-round development. In this book, I particularly liked the chapter - ”Making Mistakes, Accepting Flaws”.
Though it is common knowledge that “nobody is perfect”, the acceptance of this adage is hard to come by. This is especially true in case of students as they are at a learning age, one that allows them to make mistakes. But as a teacher or as a parent, it is our duty to understand and evaluate their mistakes. It is crucial to understand why the mistakes happened in order to guide them towards the right path so that they do not repeat them again. Even if they repeat the mistakes, we should not get hyper or angry because if we do, they wont come to us next time they have a problem. We should put ourselves in their shoes and then think for a solution that is best understood by them and suited to their problem. When I was a student, I troubled my teachers too. But they understood my problems and helped me overcome and correct the mistakes I made. In the same way, I am here to understand and teach my students to learn from their mistakes. I am not perfect and I guess nobody can be, as we are always navigating the path of learning.
Kanishk is a student of the class I taught last year. He is an excellent student - punctual and hard working. Once he came to me with a problem as he could not understand the question. Though I explained it several times, he just couldn't follow. This annoyed me and I shouted at him for not understanding the concept. It had a very negative impact on him. He scored the lowest in the class test the next day. I walked up to him and asked him why he hadn't studied. He started crying and said that he feared I would become annoyed at him again, due to which he lost the courage to come up to me and ask again. Deep within I realised it was not his mistake but mine that he could not come to me. The better way of handling it would've been to explore other ways of explaining the concept to him in a patient manner.
Acceptance gives us the opportunity to communicate better with children and deal with them more patiently. It gives them confidence and encourages them to work on their flaws.
~ Vimmy Rajpurohit is an Educator at The Fabindia School. Her email address is vrt4fab@gmail.com