Good Teachers Explain; Great Teachers Enliven!

Yes, it is true that good teachers explain and great teachers enliven while teaching. A good teacher has the knowledge, critical thinking and all other faculties of intelligence are important. However, a great teacher should be much more than experience and intelligence. 

A great teacher shows kindness to students, colleagues, parents and those around him/her. Kindness makes the world go around. It truly changes the environment in the classroom and school. Being a kind teacher helps students feel welcomed, cared for and loved. 

A great teacher is always compassionate, empathetic, positive, builder and inspiring. The teachers always look to make things better and improve things in and outside of the classroom. A great teacher finds out the hidden qualities of a student and inspires him or her to be a better person.

Being a positive person is not an easy task. Being a positive teacher is even harder when we’re always met with problems with very limited solutions. Empathy is such as important trait to have and to try to develop in ourselves and our students. Being able to put yourself in someone’s shoes and see things from their perspective can have such a powerful impact on our decisions and actions.

Our learning from:  ‘Can you teach a Zebra some Algebra’ -by  Debashis Chatterjee

Krishan Gopal Dave, Kavita Deora & Byju Joseph - The Fabindia School

Good Teacher Explain Great Teacher Enliven!

Each Teacher understands as per his / her own capacity and explains to the students to his best.

The lesson is explained as one has understood, it can be imagined as a focused source of light that exists and another light source with more wastage that gives more light and vice versa.

Students understand better if instead of being explained the topic is enlivened  for them, it can be understood by this illustration: To explain gravity, we can explain as the Earth being imagined as hanging in space, all objects including water and sea water should fall off in space, but some force is holding water and objects on earth and this is called gravity.

Our learning from “Can You Teach A Zebra some Algebra” by Debashis Chatterjee

Ajay Vijayvargi, Kusum Dangi, Tarun Mishra & Usman Gani - The Fabindia School

Good Teachers Teach, Great Teachers Enliven

What is great teaching? Great Teaching is the ability to distinguish between what can and needs to be explained and what cannot be explained. An educator can be a great teacher when he delivers his lectures with a natural expression of life and not mind.

A great teacher is when he teaches with enthusiasm and in response when his student is able to discover that they can understand and appreciate learning visually and spatially than through the privileged textual forms. A teacher should have the ability to get his students to think critically, creatively and carefully. A teacher should not just keep on talking; instead, he should engage his students in the conversation respectfully.

A teacher should plan exciting lessons if he wants 100% engagement of students in his lessons. A great teachers mission should be to draw out the best from his learners. If we can make our students socially conscious and make them lead a just and other’s centred life then we can call our self a great teacher.

Great Educators are those who do not label their children as ‘slow learners’, dull student’ but they listen to them, understand their problem, know their aspirations and then remove their despair and instil confidence in them. They should treat students challenges as opportunities and plan their lessons to solve their student’s problems.

Our learning from “Can We Teach a Zebra Some Algebra “by Debashis Chatterjee
- Sharmila Vijaywargi, Usha Panwar, Bharti Rao & Krithika Rao : The Fabindia School

Good Teachers Explain, Great Teachers Enliven

When a teacher teaches in the classroom, explain the topic but the explanation should not be just explanation, it should be taught in such a way that students could relate it with real life. It should be practical and it can make the character alive in the minds of students. He should also explain them what is the use of it in their lives. Students should be able to feel it rather than just hearing a lecture from the teacher related to the topic. For that the teachers should prepare his lesson so attractive and realistic so that students will be attracted or their concentration will be only on the topic. Teaching should be like gravity which attract everything towards its center. For example if a teacher wants to teach solar system rather than just drawing the pictures of planets and explaining it, she should ask the children to prepare models of planets one day before and he should prepare the classroom as a part of the space and then he should explain practically and make the children understand the topic.  In this way he will make the children so attentive in the classroom and he will get better learning outcome.

First photo is from The Fabindia School, the second is from Google Images

Our learning from “Can We Teach A Zebra Some Algebra by Debashis Chatterjee

- Vimmy Rajpurohit,  Monika Vaishnav, Gajendra Mewara & Jafar Khan
The Fabindia School