Class 1-2

It was the end of the rainy season somewhere in month of September-2016 when I joined one of the biggest not -for- profit organisations in India, the Azim Premji Foundation. It gave a sharp turn to my life. The programme I joined, associateship programme, is mandated with the initial process to understand a government school through observations and facilitations of classes for a year as we needed to work with public school system, developing the teacher capacity more in terms of perspective along with content.

Rarely has a book so perfectly matched its title. The Gentle Man Who Taught Infinity by Sheshagiri KM Rao is one such and what a gentle read it was! Written as a tribute to the mathematics teacher who influenced his life, Sheshagiri Rao has managed to show us with his account just how far reaching a teacher’s influence can be and how this teacher did it, not commandingly or overtly or even intentionally but with his sheer love for the subject he taught and his innate respect for the students he taught.

This is my first ever experience of working with children as a teacher. There are 10 children between the age group of 4 ½ - 5 years in UKG class. I spend the whole day with children, talk to them formally and informally and participate in various activities with them. Hence there are plenty of opportunities for me to understand them deeply throughout the day. Though I have been working with the children for past six months only, but because of the new experiences with them every day, I am able to understand children better and better.

It gives me immense pleasure to share some of my experiences as a teacher that gave me a wonderful opportunity to learn new things which made me a better teacher. But before I do that, I would like to share my learning experiences from the past without which it may be difficult to perceive the changes that took place in my teaching style.