Teaching the Teacher

One of the most frequently asked questions in the field of education is ‘Are good teachers born or made?’ It is believed that good training, skills and support can help teachers become better at the profession. Teaching is like any other skill – it can be acquired and honed. Most teachers can learn tools, strategies and skills to transform themselves into effective teachers who connect with their students and motivate them to excel.

So far we have explored the lives of teachers. In today’s blog we are going to meet two teacher trainers from different backgrounds who are working in different settings and see what they have to say about teacher training and what led them into the profession. .

Q. What made you become a teacher trainer?
Ritu Marwah	Dhruv Singh
“Sharing ideas with my colleagues in school, implementing them and seeing the joy of learning on my students gave me a high. This slowly transformed into teacher trainings which helped more teachers across the country and the feedback from them about their experiences made me go on.”	“I became a teacher trainer to facilitate teachers to reflect on the onus of being a teacher and to spread the passion and respect I have for this profession. Unless the teaching community looks at education both in terms of the social as well as the individual perspective there cannot be citizens who are able to balance social and individual concerns. If the education system needs to improve it is the teaching community that needs to be the role model; a responsibility that it no longer wants to shoulder.”
Q. What has your experience as a trainer been like?
“It has been amazing interacting with teachers from across the country. To help them with their constraints and make ideas work within their resources gives me immense satisfaction. I have learnt a lot from all the teachers I have interacted and it is amazing to see how diverse teaching experiences in our country are.”	“My experience as a teacher trainer has been rewarding: spiritually, cognitively and monetarily. I am idolised by many and teachers look forward to trainings. The flip side however is that in spite of teachers reverence, the idolising, the conviction with which they talk of the philosophy, their class room practices are devoid of the constructivist touch because it calls for perseverance, hard work and humility: so easy to appreciate but so difficult to practise.”

Q. What do you think works with teachers-content/mode of transaction.

“The best approach is a hand on approach keeping in mind the situations the teachers work in and their limitations. It works best when you customize the modules according to the school resources, student strength and the teacher background rather than giving them ideal solutions which may be very difficult to implement practically. Scaffolding the teaching strategies for teachers work best rather than giving them all at one time. Frequent trainings are the need of the hour rather than one training and then forgetting all of it later. “

“A balanced mixture of both: firstly the mode of transaction and secondly the content. People connect to you first for what you are and then with what you have to say. The mode of transaction should be what you want the teachers to do in the classroom, the content would determine they way and how teachers reflect on what they do in the classroom.”

The key to effective teacher training is understanding the adult. Adults are independent and self – directed. They need to be free to decide on what they want to learn.

A training program can be effective only if it is based on a real and felt need, and is attuned to the reality of the classroom situation. A trainer needs to be sound in pedagogy, but she needs to provide a practioner’s insight into how pedagogy will translate in class. She should be a skilled communicator, an empathetic mentor and a strong motivator. A tall order indeed! The goal of teacher training should be such that the teachers become stakeholders in the training process rather than passive receivers of knowledge.