-3 Marks

I have a friend who teaches Computer Science at a school. I have a habit of assigning marks to her (meaning if she didn't cook dinner that would be a -2, if she asked her husband to cook, that would be -5 and if she made roti and dal, that would get her 0.5 (positive marks but not high marks because of the Spartan menu).

Few months back, for the first time in her life, she started to handle class 1 (students who are about 5-6 years old). And after 3 months of teaching class 1, she cried bitterly while on a call with me saying she couldn't manage the children - and that 

• she had to speak LOUDLY
• they do not seem to understand simple instructions 
• each child in the class had to be told the instruction individually
• each one of them tended to come to her and ask for her confirmation ("mam, we have to open page 10, no?")

and so on. She was on the verge of having a nervous breakdown. I suggested a couple of things to her. She said she will try out those.

When I next had a call with her she gave me the broad highlights.

• She would count backwards FIVE, FOUR, THREE, TWO. By the time she reached ONE, the children would become silent so she could start her class. That was good news.
• She also told me that if she asked the children to name any natural thing (like flower, tree) they could name. But if she asked them to draw any natural thing, they couldn't despite the fact that they could draw flower, tree. We surmised it could be because they could, at that age, handle only one thing at a time - either name natural things or draw a flower / tree. Once you mixed two concepts in one instruction most children could not handle it. Of course, there were a few children who could comprehend and do what she wanted.
• I asked her if giving negative points to the children had any effect - the way I gave HER negative marks. She said no. She said she divided the class into 3 rows and if the children in any row did something wrong, she wrote a big zero on the blackboard and assigned it (zero marks) to that row. That helped she said. She added that giving -5 marks didn't help because the children thought they got +5, she explained that small children didn't understand the concept of minus. The beauty of not understanding algebra....!!!! Aaaaahhhh. 

Published on

7/20/15, 6:31 PM

India Standard Time