Because we have failed our teachers. We as a society have failed to enable our teachers for them to teach at their full potential. So instead of celebrating, let's pledge to remove the obstacles that our teachers face. And if we are able to do that, it will not only raise the bar for this noble profession but also result in positive impact for millions of children studying in government schools across the nation.
The central or the first point of reforms in our education system should be the teacher. A serious and urgent attempt at a Teachers First Policy is the need of the hour. This Teachers’ Day can be the perfect platform to first recognize what are the things that we are doing wrong by our teachers and then work on these to make them go away.
What is Teachers First?
Before defining Teachers First, let’s first understand why Teachers First? The quality of teaching or learning depends on the interface of the teacher and the child in what we call the ‘learning zone’.
We need to find ideas that will ignite this learning zone and deliver better outcomes for our children despite the challenges of existing system. All this must be delivered using low-tech innovations in classroom transactions that are simple to understand, execute and optimize; innovations that involve and recognize the teacher as the enabler. Teachers are the ones who will introduce innovations to their students and make learning a fun-filled activity.
The teacher will play the role of the igniter in the interactions with the children and hence we need to enable and bolster the teacher to perform this critical role to the best of their ability.
Herein lies the genesis of the Teachers First thinking – because to create excitement in the learning zone, the teacher has to be excited. So in essence Teachers First is putting the teacher in the centre of educational reforms and then bringing out various resources (including technology and changes in pedagogy) to enable the teacher – to teach better.
Removing Obstacles
National Achievement Survey (NAS) data shows that the impact of government schools and classrooms on a child’s learning is very small. If you compare pre and post-COVID NAS Learning outcome data, you would see that impact of classroom learning is only 6-7 percent higher compared to home learning during Covid times.
The simple reason for this is that teachers are not allowed to teach. I estimate that a government school teacher spends less than 50 percent of her/his time in the classroom, and unless we unlock that trapped and wasted time, we will continue just to wish and hope.
There is a way out! Unburden teachers from non-teaching tasks, install low-tech teaching aids like interactive TV to enable learning in the classroom even if teacher quality is below what is desired, and use the data analytics tool to monitor leading indicators and not just outcomes continuously.
Having worked for over a decade with one crore government school children, I am optimistic that this problem can be solved if we don’t turn a blind eye to the story the data tells us!
Then there are other problems. In August 2022, two of my team members went to a primary school in a city to check if everything was going fine with our newly implemented Sampark FLN TV (a plug and play device that converts a classroom into a smart and future-ready classroom). A teacher in the school commented that there are only two teachers for five classes in the school and Sampark TV has come as a boon as students can now be engaged better as per the lesson plan even as the teacher hops across to another class. So clearly technology innovations focusing on enabling the teacher needs to be created and implemented at scale.
Elevate the Teacher
Anybody can teach is what most people assume or believe, and this is more so for schoolteachers. The unfortunate truth of our times is that teachers are not respected and they are perceived as individuals who are uninterested in teaching.
We have to recognize the teacher for the exclusive attributes that she or he has as a professional. We have to elevate the teaching profession in India and make it attractive and financially rewarding to attract good talent. As per an OECD report, the starting salary of a lower secondary school teacher in Luxemburg is $79,000 (approx. Rs 59 lakh) per annum. Financial remuneration definitely needs to be looked into but surely we can make the life of a teacher easier by providing best possible resources.
Adequate training can make the life of a teacher easier on many fronts - use of technology that will make learning easier, to understand the learning requirements of each child, to use learning aids to explain concepts in a creative and engaging way, to design group activities and exercise multiple methods of assessment and evaluation. And all of these can be made available on an on-demand learning digital platform for the teacher.
We need to personalize the interventions that we plan for our teachers; simple things such as providing certificates of excellence for completion of trainings. The capability of digital outreaches to personalize content for each teacher needs to leveraged which will convey the importance and respect for each teacher in an overall program.
Again pedagogical interventions need to be distinctive in being as much teacher-focused as they are student-focused. For example, pedagogical innovations should be offered in the form of mock classrooms wherein teachers can see a lesson plan as it should be explained in class. This helps teachers who are first-time learners of the concept themselves, to learn in a safe environment and without judgement on their prior knowledge (or lack thereof).
Let’s Start
The list of enablements for our teachers could go on. But on this Teachers’ Day let’s start – let’s start doing and effecting changes that will truly bolster our teachers - rather than just celebrating this day.
Let me leave you with a thought in the words of Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan - Teachers should be the best minds in the country; after all, they are the ones who hold the power of shaping our future. And if I may add, shaping the future of our children.
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