Piu Mahapatra, Coordinator, CAIE (Cambridge Assessment International Education) Lakshmipat Singhania Academy International Source: Piu Mahapatra
In our school, Lakshmipat Singhania Academy, the class bell doesn't ‘ring,’ rather, it ‘plays’ a musical note. Unlike in most old practices where the shrill buzzer often jolts the young learners from their thoughts, here, it softly reminds them to move on with time. School is a space where a child from toddler till adulthood spends a substantial chunk of his daytime right after breakfast. It is a ‘home’ away from ‘home’. The teachers, who play a vital role in shaping the lives and traits of the students are the ‘other mothers’ not merely mentors or facilitators. Let us celebrate Mother's Day by remembering both and acknowledging the different responsibilities that each perform in sculpting the young minds into aware, empathetic citizens of the future world.
A caregiver to the core, a teacher, is not only responsible for imparting knowledge but also for creating a positive environment that encourages the children to learn, embrace their own mistakes and rectify. While a mother takes care of ‘well-being’ of a child a great teacher enforces ‘well doing’ within her classrooms. ‘Welldoing’ is a key term coined by Dr Karen Angus-Cole and Abby Osborne, lecturer and curriculum development officer for the University of Bath, UK. It is also known as ‘cognitive comfort’ which tries to cover the gap between the state of wellbeing and learning stress of a student. A ‘mindful’ teacher can liberate herself from the stereotypes of a classroom setting with rows of desks facing front, a strict pose of sitting maintaining silence. Our classroom is set up in a flexible pattern where the children can sit in circles or lie down on the floor while enjoying sessions like book reading , a freedom they usually enjoy at home. A great teacher, like a considerate mother, provides a thinking space for her child.
Any idea of a young learner, however timid, or even weird, needs to be nurtured and polished so that during later years the young adult knows what to do with an idea. The paths of mother and teacher cross and often merge at different junctions in a child’s journey to adulthood. If a visual symbol can be drawn of the role of the two in nurturing a child, it will probably be the open and closed brackets within which the young child grows.