May 9, 2014 Teaching and Learning

Test

(A Glimpse From My Classroom Window

While Students Take a State Math Exam)

©May 9^th, 2014

By Vijaya Sundaram

 Trees, a brick wall

Fighting a grey sky.

Glass windows reflect

And reflect back

Human and non-human images,

Fleeting and busy, still and silent,

Over-layered, screen upon screen

While cars flow by,

An easy stream, swift and sure,

On a road where sound

May or may not exist.

Not in my quiet classroom, anyway –

 

Here, where heads are bent

Over official papers

Lives the Mind,

Where only the rustle of papers,

And the scratch of pencils,

And the shuffle of abstracted

Student feet reveal a Supreme Force –

Thought, turned into abstract

Abstruse, enigmatic

Symbol, a language not

Everyone masters, but which

Life and Matter know.

 

Cellular and atomic

Is their knowledge.

And the Laws were

Already written, before

My students and I

Before everyone,

And everything,

Everywhere, everywhen,

Ever were.

 

___________________________________________________________

Tags: #Original Poetry, atomic and cellular, classroom moments, exams, Laws, mathematics, Students, teacher, universal laws

Jun 11, 2013 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries

Dread and Fatigue
©By Vijaya Sundaram
June 11th, 2013

Two words that sum up what made up much of my past week — and I know it isn’t over yet.

In fact, it won’t be over until I’m dead.

Meanwhile, I have to keep going, pushing on, like a diver plunging into the trenches.  And you know what they say, the pressure in those depths can kill you.

Oh yes, there are always moments of joy — many moments, in fact.  Moments of pleasure abound (as they do when I’m reading a book, and eating a nice snack, or seeing my daughter bound about happily, or when we watch “Red Dwarf” together, in companionable silliness, or hang out with my funny, but equally tired husband) — so, don’t worry.  It’s not depression.  Nor is it some treatable thing.

It’s bone-deep.  It’s surface-physical, too, but that’s just sleep-deprivation and encroaching age, I suspect. 

It’s soul-deep — because I see what the world is doing to its dreamers, its poets, its singers, its healers, its teachers, its truth-tellers — and I am scared for the future of us all.

I see the venality of people in power, and much worse, the greed for power in those who already have it. 

When do such people choose to allow their humanity to be smothered?  At what point do they say, “That’s it!  I’m selling out!”  Or:  “The hell with everyone else.  I want what’s mine!” 

Or, more scary still:  Did they ever have it?

I see the disrespect that people who know nothing about education show to the teachers in their midst.  And when I see this, I want to curse those people to a lifetime of ignorance, and make them suffer for it.  However, I cannot.  I will not.  The teacher in me says, “Teach them.”

That’s what I shall have to do.

And that goes as deep as living itself.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The End ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tags: #humanity, Living, Students, teach, Teachers and teaching, venality

May 13, 2013 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries, Teaching and Learning

Being Professional
©By Vijaya Sundaram
May 13th, 2013

Teaching young people can sometimes be rewarding.

Seriously.

The only downside is:  We have to always present our best selves to our students. 

Moodiness is a no-no.  Not good. 

In no profession is the need to present “the face” more present than in the teaching profession.  It’s called “being professional.” 

It’s important.  Leave your own, personal feelings and sensitivities at the door.  Don’t indulge in sarcasm (it’s hard to resist at times, though, especially when one knows one is being manipulated).  Take everything, but everything, at face value, EVEN if it’s a question or a response that is absolutely, blindingly, clearly the result of a calculated attempt by a student to derail and sabotage a class.

Treat that student’s random question as if it’s a matter of absolute interest.  And it is, if you look at it closely, and examine its true motive.  Carefully answer the question posed as if in earnest, but answer the question behind the question.  That is, if you have the time.

Alas, one doesn’t always have the time to do all that.  One succeeds being a perfect person only for the first few months.  After that, one becomes short and curt in one’s responses.  Then, after hearing the curt response, one becomes overcome with remorse within, and swears to not be laconic or ironic.  One has to remind oneself that these are, after all, tender souls, innocent (!) young humans who need nurturing.  One resets oneself to be tender-hearted all over again, only to have some hoodlum in disguise try to tear down one’s lesson, or demolish a feeling of community in the classroom.  That’s okay.  Perhaps, it’s the student’s cry for attention of some sort.  All one needs to do is have a swift, uncompromising consequence — which, doesn’t always happen, because the flow of students is seemingly endless during the day.  Then, later on, one follows up.  Sometimes, that works.

If only that cry for attention by a student were directed in a positive way — as in, responding to a book or a topic being discussed, or general observations about a teaching unit, or about the human condition in general!  Then, one could engage, discuss, have a true dialogue. 

Alas, sometimes, that doesn’t happen.  But then again, it does, at other times.  One mustn’t give up hope.

For sometimes, a student just might remember that she or he was truly difficult, or unresponsive in class, or obnoxious, and apologize years later.  (That has been known to happen, and it’s lovely to have this reminder that one must have faith in the good sense of one’s students.)

Through all this, the teacher does not ever give up, even if, at times, said teacher might get overwhelmed and upset, s/he being human, after all.

For this is what a teacher has to do:  The teacher gets up every morning, girds up his or her loins, and goes into the forefront of something that could either be a joint endeavor, (like people in a submarine that is plumbing the depths in search of who-kn0ws-what), or a battle of wits.  Of course, it should never be a battle, but some like it so.  And some students want it to be so. 

And then, the teacher teaches several hours a day, and grades papers for an equal or greater number of hours.  The teacher is expected to be totally in control of the flow of schedules and information regarding extraneous matters not really related to teaching.  The teacher attends meetings, and shows up to everything dutifully.  The teacher volunteers to take on things unrelated to the actual job, because, well, it’s fun!  The teacher has to always say, “Things are great!” when asked how things are going, because … well, at some level, things are great (even if one might feel cynical on the day-to-day level, the level of bone-deep exhaustion).

All this aside, the teacher must go in every day to work, and love, love, love the subject, and by extension those whom she or he teaches. 

Sleeping three or four hours every night (whether she or he does it willfully, because of some sort of self-destructive urge, or because of school-work, is irrelevant), waking up at an ungodly hour every morning, cudgeling her brain into wakefulness by the repeated application of trimethylxanthine in its liquid, lactic-tinged form, and smiling a warm welcome to all the equally weary children who pour like sluggish streams of molasses, the teacher stands, prepared, poised and punctual.

That is called “being professional.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The End ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tags: #Teaching, Being Professional, school-teacher's musings, Students, teachers, vocation and avocation, What it takes to be a teacher

Apr 22, 2013 Original Poetry, Reading, Writing, Thinking, Teaching and Learning

Daily-ness and Disaster
©By Vijaya Sundaram
April 22nd, 2013

How banal, how mundane
How silly, how pointless
Our lives seem!

Sitting in class, pencils in hand
Trying to be good, while
The teacher gazes on.

Stern she looks, and somber
Trying to be vigilant
Wasting time on gum-chewers
And time-wasters.

When elsewhere, lives end
Abruptly, pointlessly.
Grief and loss bloom
Like a mushroom cloud

Over a teeming populace
Wiped out by violence,
Riven by famine and flood.

And children torn from the arms of love,
Watch as parents are afloat on a sea
Of uncertainty.

Where food comes from
Hardly matters, when
They worry about whether
It comes, at all.

Whether school is up and running
Seems to matter so little, and yet
Someone is shot at brutally,
Risking her all, to reach school.

Elsewhere, in the city, last week
A child of eight died, in mid-cheer
Abruptly, pointlessly, painfully.
A shining being, ready for greatness.

And here, in the humming peace
The strumming quiet
The numbing apathy of daily life
We sit, pretending what we do matters.

It may all seem pointless now,
In the aftermath of recent tragedy.
And I might be right.

But I’d like to be hopeful
I’d like to say it matters
I’d like to say, “Everything,
But everything matters.”

Writing matters, reading matters,
Being hopeful matters, being good
Matters a whole lot.

And I would be right.

~~~~~~~~~ The End ~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tags: #Hope, #Learning, #NaPoWriMo, #Teaching, Boston Marathon Bombing, classroom, famines, floods, global disasters, Goodness, Malala, reading, Students, wars

Mar 28, 2013 Essays on Music and Musicians, Parenting/ Home-schooling / Family Music and other Notes, Teaching and Learning

What Does it Mean to Be a Teacher?
©By Vijaya Sundaram
March 28th, 2013

It means that you:

Give unstintingly of your attention to your student or students who are there to learn from you.

Not allow dislike, prejudice or frustration to mar your interactions, even if a student makes it VERY hard.

Don’t give in to despair when confronted with failure, either on the part of your students to understand, acknowledge, absorb or appreciate the beauty of what you’re offering, or what they’re learning, or on your own part for not always having been all of the things you wanted to be, from time to time — because we’re all exhausted, all human, all prone to retire from time to time, to lick our wounds and self-heal.

Find that which is pure, child-like (with a capacity for wonder, questioning and curiosity) in your student, and teach THAT person within the student.

Listen to, and learn from, your students.

Always remember you’re a conduit (through whom all of the knowledge, learning and understanding flow)  not the repository of all of those things.

Love, always love your student, love your own teacher, and love the subject you’re teaching deeply and completely.

****************************************************************

I was thinking of these things after I had a long talk with my husband, teacher extraordinaire. 

He had been feeling low, because a student had omitted mentioning him as his music teacher on his website (and had shamelessly mentioned more famous and well-known names in the field).  My husband wasn’t expecting gratitude, just acknowledgement, because in this field, as in any great field of artistic and soulful endeavor, one MUST acknowledge  one’s teachers, especially those with whom one has spent a significant amount of time.

My husband is primarily a teacher of Indian classical music (among other types of music).  He had taught this student thoughtfully, devotedly and completely, over a relatively long period of time, and didn’t expect much back from him.  The student was talented, but arrogant, puffed up with a spurious sense of self-importance.  We had already seen signs of that while he used to come to our place nine years or so ago, but we dismissed that as the cockiness of youth.

There is no way to get around this, no matter how much one might try and dismiss it as a passing wind which we “respect not.”  To find that one is consciously omitted rankles.  One would have to be a sage to brush it off. 

That student’s rank ingratitude and puffed-up self-importance will cause him grief one day. Every person has to face his or her Karmic duty. 

What was my husband’s response to feeling low about all this, plus other worries? 

This: 

I have taught many people; I have always tried to give appropriately to the individual student rather than use prefabricated lessons or curricula.

No two people want or need the same thing. But everyone needs music.

The world’s parlous condition increases our need for song. I sometimes become discouraged…but singing fortifies me and reminds me that I’m just one link in a chain that reaches farther back in time than any of us can imagine.

I have had so many great teachers in my life; I’m remembering them….while thinking of my students. If I cannot give what I know to my students, my teachers’ love and labor was in vain. My teachers loved me. I love my students. That’s how it works.

Tags: #Journal Entry, #Learning, #Teaching, Students, teachers