I am fortunate to grow up in a family that gives a lot of importance to community work. I have seen my parents donating money, clothes and other items to the needy both in good times and bad times. All the four schools, a college and university I have studied gave a lot of emphasis on social work.

Community Work means service undertaken for any particular societal cause. The causes include:

1. visiting the aged people and orphaned children and getting actively involved with them
2. collecting food and distributing it amongst the needy
3. Cleaning and beautifying the surroundings
4. Donating blood
5. Creating awareness on social issues
6. Donating money, clothes and other items to the needy

I had done a month long volunteering work Krupaprasad Kendra. This non-governmental organization is located at Nashik district of Maharashtra. The organization focuses people affected with HIV/ AIDS by caring and supporting them. The volunteering work was done before the start of my third year of Under Graduation. I learnt the basic skills of counselling, documentation, etc during my work there.

When I was pursuing my post-graduation I was part of the street play team named as Drishti which is a part of the Centre of Social Action of Christ University. We often visited the slums and villages in and around Bangalore such as LR Nagar, Rajendra Nagar and others and noted the problems faced by them. Later we would develop a script projecting their issue and practice the street play. In addition to this, we would visit the slums or villages, invite the locals to witness our play and then perform the street play in the middle of the village and slums. We aimed in creating awareness on multiple issues.

According to the National Education Policy 2020, Bangalore University included the Community Project Work component for students as part of their coursework. Five marks are allocated for this work for all the seven subjects in a semester. This was new to me in the realm of teaching due to the marks component. I had already encouraged students to do volunteering activities in the beginning of the semester. I was wondering what to do for the marks component as per the Bangalore University norms. Then I realised why not convert the volunteering encouragement to the students into an activity. I did exactly the same.

I told students to seriously undertake volunteering work for any noble cause for atleast five hours. This can be either in bangalore or their respective hometown during the Christmas vacation. It was interesting to see how students would take this activity. A majority of them did the volunteering work in their respective hometown. They were excited and constantly updating me through whatsapp on their developments.

The volunteering component for the students came with its sets of problems. Even though majority of my students did their work in the Christmas holidays and some even before that, there were a small section of students who did not even bother to look for any volunteering work. This became a headache for me. In the end of the first week of January this year Bangalore like other places in India went for a third lockdown.

I had decided to hold a students’ presentation on the volunteering work undertaken by them on Jan 17th through MS Teams. Hence, five marks for the work done by them that must include certificates, letter of appreciation or photo or video records as proofs and five marks for the presentation of the same. As mentioned earlier, many of them did it but there were a section who did not do anything. These small fraction of students were complaining about everything like they did not find any, we can’t go out during the lockdown, parents were not allowing and some of them were not at all interested to do the volunteering work. This made me really angry.

As these students almost gave up and I sensed that my encouragement to students to take up any volunteering work was falling flat. I decided to tweak the voluntary activity. I told students to search for any volunteering work that can be done online. I found a website named as ivounteer. The link for the same is https://www.ivolunteer.in/. Students can opt for other virtual volunteering too.

One student was unable to find even one virtual volunteering work so I gave him an assignment to list down five NGO’s in his hometown of Hyderabad and an article about the same. One of the student did not do anything. Some of them volunteered for more than one. Rest of them volunteered in various local, national & international organizations.

Overall, it was a fantastic experience with lots of ups and down. Still, I am motivated to explore new possibilities in the coming semesters for the Community Project Work component. This is my first Community Project Work for the students.

Penned by – Livea Thekkekara Paul works as an English Lecturer at International School of Management Excellence, a leading private B-school in Bengaluru, India.

1. General
2. Basic Tools/ Methods
3. Celebratory Literature Study
4. MOOC
5. Comic Strip
6. OTT – Students’ Seminar

General

Teaching is considered to be a very noble profession. We teachers are credited with creating impressionable minds. These minds are the future of any nation. My teachers in school taught English language and literature in a traditional way using white chalk and Blackboard method. Some of them were fantastic storytellers, a trait that I am yet to master. It was during my University days that I have come across teachers employing various methods of teaching English that are not only novel but also exciting to participate too. Now, when I am one, it is imperative that I chose novel methods in teaching English to the impressionable young minds.

But, nowadays, it is difficult for me to teach English language and literature based solely on textbook or chalk & board method. It is observed that holding students’ attention for a longer period of time is very difficult. It is very difficult for me teach students for a longer duration. Hence, it becomes imperative to teach English with a variety of methods so that students don’t lose touch with the subject. I have employed some methods to teach English language and literature. This blog is my record of the same.

Basic Tools/ Methods

Kahoot and Mentimeter are the two online platforms for better teaching. I was introduced to Mentimeter during my coursework for PhD in the year 2018. I came to know about Kahoot and other online platforms through the British Council’s online course viz. How to Plan a Great Lesson. I used this first in the month of June 2019 BBA students & July 2019 to the communication club students of PGDM.

Kahoot is the one platform that is not only easy to use but also I have students enjoying it the most. It is filled with lots of activities that are based on games that are actually nothing but quizzes in different formats. What I do is, I try to formulate questions based the themes of the short stories, poems or plays given in the students’ textbooks. There are different formats of quizzes that can be made use of.

Mentimeter platform took a lot of patience from my side to make it work in the classroom. I have found students not liking it much. Though, the Word Cloud feature of mentimeter is my favourite. Teachers can take inputs from students and mentimeter arranges those words beautifully as a cloud. Being an English teacher it is wonderful to see words arranged in an interesting way.

Role Plays are an interesting way to teach or make students understand a scenario fictionally. I have encouraged students to enact role plays. The focus here was to make students understand the intricacies of the characters in a story. They were given the freedom to tweak the stories in a sensible way. They had their own interpretations of the short stories given in the texts. Their versions are an interesting take of life. Students later converted these role plays as Drama in Videos.

“Ma’am, most of the chapters in English textbooks are so boring and some of them we have already learnt in our school days.”

The above statement was the usual dialogue I had to and still do listen from my students. Is the problem with the textbook makers or creators that the students are bored? Let’s not take students’ point of view currently and instead focus from teacher’s point of view. Why can’t we repackage our teaching style?

Celebratory Literature Study

During the course of my teaching I realized that students from the science and commerce background do not realize the depth of English Literature. They believe that English Literature is either Shakespeare or British and American Literature. This is far removed from truth. There are different types of literature in the vast ocean of English Literature. I want my students to see, observe, taste and be aware of some of them. This made me scratch my head a lot and led to the new way of making students know about Halloween Literature , Christmas Literature and Indian Cultural Studies. I gave the name – Celebratory Literature Study to this style of teaching. The name itself is self explanatory.

I wanted students to be aware that the theme of Halloween, Christmas and Indian Cultural Studies is not only observed in movies but also in short stories, novels, comics, etc. For this, I told students that we will celebrate the “theme such as Halloween, Christmas & Indian Cultural Representations” and “its application on the literary field”. The days coinciding or nearing with the celebrations of Halloween, Christmas and Republic days were chosen for the same. I had a deep and effective discussions with the students. From the discussions, I decided to make them a class level event planned in accordance with my regular timetable with them that is conducting the events during the Generic English hour.

I made students create posters, schedules, organize activities tapping literature such as Quiz, Best Costume Icon(featuring authors/poets), Videos(Halloween & Christmas short story videos), Treasure Hunt with questions featuring from movies, folk tales and music across the world(these constitutes Cultural Studies), Secret Santa (traditional game), making reels on different folk traditions in India, etc. All these activities ensured that students not only enjoy but also get familiarized with the varieties of English Literature.

MOOC

I came to know about MOOC in the year, 2013. As part of the Literary Criticism & Contemporary Critical Studies subject that I had to study in the first year of MA in English with Communication Studies, we had to study an online course titled as The Camera Never Lies on the Coursera Platform. The marks obtained from the course were taken into consideration for the overall Semester marks. There were numerous such courses which I did since then.

The full form of MOOC is Massive Open Online Course. There are many platforms available for MOOCs. Some of them are Cousera, FutureLearn, Swayam, Udemy, Khan Aademy, EDX, etc. The best part of MOOCs is that you can access the latest subject and learn from the experts from any part of the world. Though it is largely self-driven, the variety of courses available to learn in MOOCs are interesting.

I wanted the students to go through the experience that I had through MOOCs and make them aware that there are many interesting courses that could be learnt through various platforms. I had observed that most of the students didn’t have the basic knowledge to go about with seeking information for academic purposes. Therefore, I made them enroll for a course titled as Academic Information Seeking offered by University of Copenhagen available in Coursera. The marks obtained through the course was added to their Bangalore University Internal marks out of 5.

Comic Strip

Students don’t appreciate doing assignments in general. I thought why not make it interesting. In one of the Faculty Development Programs that I attended last year introduced the notion of making students create a comic strip based on the text being taught to them. This seemed interesting to me. I had personally never done the same though have attempted in creating comic cartoons in notebooks along with friends during my classes as a student.

It was not an easy assignment to give to students. I had to explain multiple times. Students were told to use a laptop in general though most of them preferred mobile and some of them used tablet to access the Canva website. There are multiple options available in Canva for design. I had instructed students to use specifically comic strip template. They were told to take any scene from the short story taught in class and convert it into a comic strip. This assignment was given to 1st year Generic English BCom students and 2nd Year Additional English BBA & BCom students. The short stories that were converted into comic strips were Katherine Mansfield’s The Doll’s House and Hillaire Belloc’s A Conversation with a Reader.

OTT – Students’ Seminar

As part of student development activities, I had organized a student’s seminar. This was a class based activity. The topic given was OTT i.e. Over The Top Shows. The class were divided into groups. Each group chose one English language based OTT Show and gave a presentation on it. The objective of this activity was to assess and assist the class in developing one’s presentation skills. Students literally took this activity on a different level. Some of them dressed like the characters from the OTT Show, Squid Game, some of them performed scenes and some others danced and even sketched apart from their regular presentations. It was a refreshing presentation for me as a teacher.

Penned by – Livea Thekkekara Paul works as an English Lecturer at International School of Management Excellence, a leading private B-school in Bengaluru, India.

At least once in life, a teacher must have surely thought whether they are natural teachers or they have to develop the skills to be one. We have heard our colleagues commenting that some of us have the flair of teaching our chosen subjects and some, no matter how much ever they strive, are unable to teach. Who is a Natural Teacher? A Natural Teacher is someone who can teach a particular subject with such finesse that he or she is described as a teacher who is born with the skill to teach. I am at least a teacher who is definitely not a natural teacher but striving to be one.

The first thing that comes in the minds of the faculty about a quality of a natural teacher is that of his or her teaching style. A natural teacher will ensure that all the students are brought together so that efforts are undertaken to work in teams which will assist in the co-operation with others in classrooms which will then aid in their work life. We must also scan the pedagogy adopted irrespective of the subjects taught. This include the approaches, methodologies and techniques utilized in teaching.

A Natural Teacher will incorporate all sorts of activities that are creative in nature in the class schedule. Thinking communities are formed by the natural teacher. This means that the student community are not just taught their subject but also made to think, question, analyse and apply their minds. Whatever have been discussed till now are superficial things. Haven’t we, the teaching community thought about our own teachers? How many of them do we recollect? What has made them special in our hearts?

When I thought about the above questions I found some qualities that were similar to most of them. These qualities still make my heart call them as my loving teachers. The first one among them is the connect some teachers had with their students. It is really unbelievable and enviable. They command not only the attention but also the respect from the students. These teachers do not need any external faculty to draw the student’s attention or discipline for themselves.

The natural teachers, secondly, deal with warmth amongst the student community. This really means a lot. It means that the teachers make sure that they unconditionally accept their students. They listen to the needs of the class actively, make eye contact and smile with them. These physical attributes are the first attraction or you can say the first impression in the minds of students on any teacher.

Emotional aspect is as much important as the physical one. A natural teacher must have the ability to keep aside his or her petty feelings, be with their class and empathize with their feelings. Spiritual quotient is also an intriguing aspect. We are also aiding in the formation of the character of students. We must realize the leadership angle of a teacher as we facilitate the children to make them figure out the manner to work out whatever they want in life instead of spoon feeding them.

The Natural Teacher strives hard so that there is an equilibrium between the needs & wants of the majority and the needs and wants of the minority in the class. I don’t believe that a natural teacher is born biologically. A person has to toil really hard to be called as one. He or she has to do a SWOT Analysis of oneself and work towards the goal.

Nevertheless, most of the teacher community thinks that Teaching is an art rather than science. This skill can definitely be learnt and gradually fine tuned in time. Natural teachers might be an expert who commands the classroom but is also a partner in the learning of students. We can also observe the fact that some teachers are in a better position to convey an idea in a lucid manner with lots of excitement.

Teachers must create a road map wherein their students can tread their academic journey with a clear mission. These students are then placed in the driver’s seat wherein they go through their study references with utmost seriousness. They get the liberty to practice multiple times. Students are also given timely feedback from their natural teachers. The progress in student’s learning can be witnessed in the way the course is planned and the climate or the environment in which they learn.

Therefore, being a natural teacher takes a lot of time, numerous experimentation, mindful reflection and rigorous coaching. All teachers must strive to be teachers of students in good spirit instead of just teachers of course content. Secretly, don’t we want our students to fondly remember us as a super teacher?

Reference:- 1. The Chronicle of Higher Education (chronicle.com)

2. teachertomsblog.blogspot.com

Penned by – Livea Thekkekara Paul works as an English Lecturer at International School of Management Excellence, a leading private B-school in Bengaluru, India.

“Ma’am, they are speaking in Hindi only. Can you please tell them to speak in English.”

“Ma’am, in my group all are from Tamil/ Telugu Nadu so they crack jokes in their tongues. I feel left out”

The above are some of the dialogues that I hear constantly from my students, every academic year. Though the title of the article reflects the northern and the southern parts of our country, this write-up also encompasses the sentiments from other states. The feeling is mutual even when they are harboured against each other. I wonder whether only I have encountered this matter being a language teacher. Did other subject teachers experience this? No idea, may be yes, may be no. Atleast, being a language teacher and that also English one, makes me ponder on it a lot.

What do you mean by North-South Divide? When students belonging to a particular class tend to form a group based solely on their mother-tongue or home state and do not mingle with other state students, a divide in them is observed. As this divide is mostly seen amongst the north and south state students, I have termed this as a North –South Divide. One must note that this notion is also observed in students coming from other states too.

I have observed in classes that students from one mother-tongue and or a particular state, form a group in class and outside. First of all, students in all likelihood will sit in groups. The early signs of divide comes from here. They feel homely when they sit as per their home state. Whenever any teacher gives them a group work, their groups will be formed on those lines. Similar linguistic background will be the criteria scholars will consider on those occasions. Most of the times, teachers do not interfere in this group formation.

Scholars have to “communicate” or interact with each other for the completion of their work as mingling is unavoidable. It is also a noticeable trend amongst students to speak in their language rather than in the official language, English. All the students are not comfortable in expressing their thoughts in English. If some are good in doing the physical work or back end jobs or writing/gathering information then some are only good at speaking. This is how one can argue that learners will learn ‘teamwork’. But in this, a teacher can easily identify the disturbing trend of some pupils falling apart that is not able to gel together. They are also in the loss of learning the skill of teamwork.

Most of the students don’t socialize with other language groups. They are averse to these ‘other’ students. If students are observed carefully outside the classroom then you can see startling facts. Pupils will hardly hang out outside their circle. If they meet up in a café or a park, one can observe that class dynamics are observed here too. Social Platforms are no different either.

What are the effects of the language divide? Students who are not well in English become comfortable in their own mother tongue. By the end of their degree program they realize that they have not improved their skills, English being one of them. They do not utilize the sources or time when they were studying. Rejections in interview will be a tight slap or a wake-up call for most of the students. They will then sit down and start thinking one by one as to what wrong they did, what did the college not do for them, where all they could have worked  harder, etc. The last question will be the last thought that will come in their mind for most of them.

As teachers, what can we do to narrow down this North-South Divide? The first thing any teacher must pay attention is to how are students sitting in class? Do they always sit in the same group every class? If that is so then teachers must discourage it. There must be some system wherein students sit with each other with a different pupil like the ones followed in school where every day row wise students change their seating pattern. Moreover, teachers must mix the members of a cluster. No groups must be repeated for any activity both for a subject and others too. This is really a headache but if teachers patiently pay attention then mixing amongst students will happen in a healthy way.

Teachers must converse only in English even when they are tempted to speak in their mother tongue. This should be followed not only in class but also outside otherwise students will feel that their teacher shows partiality. They must encourage pupils to speak only in English and also simultaneously correct their ward’s spoken English. Students must be made aware of showing respect to other state people. This will happen only if they are guided appropriately in class. Group work are the starting point for learning all the skills together.

It is a waste of time if teachers complain by the end of their semester teaching that students can’t speak in English, write in English and can’t do a presentation properly. All these things can’t be rectified by a teacher alone. All the teachers must participate in student development right from the beginning of the academic year. It is tedious but not impossible. Teachers are humans. They cannot change herd mentality but can alter a bit of student’s thinking and behaviour. Hopefully, teachers manage to tackle the North-South divide in their respective classes.

Penned by – Livea Thekkekara Paul works as an English Lecturer at International School of Management Excellence, a leading private B-school in Bengaluru, India.