BURNT OUT...

I like being a teacher in my own particular way.

But management is always telling teachers what a good teacher is supposed to do ... I wonder who will going to tell them, how management is supposed to treat the teacher. In this country teacher is a meagerly paid, over burdened, ignored, humiliated and belittles creature. No matter where you teach, people will always end up saying, "but you have an easy job, you are a teacher." someone said, "we are in the business of people management."

Teachers should be considered a person as important as a scientist, a law maker and even a law keeper, because it is the teacher who is supposed to shape the nation's behavior. Someone suggested that teacher can take up to 28 periods a week and school management made sure that they all do. Over burdening them with substitution and extra duties. In turn the teachers does everything else except teaching and feeling burned out.

With the loads of workshops conducted by schools telling teachers how to be good, the result is zero.... the teachers still dislike being a teacher, having to go to classes, putting up with students, who don't even take you seriously and parents, who treat you like personal servants.

In one of the workshops, they told us about loads of things that we shouldn't do to our students, but there was not one suggestions about what to do when a certain situation arises.

Another point was a child's behavior is the reflection of the teacher's or parents' behavior; fine, being a teacher I am responsible for my behavior with the students, but how the hell I am responsible for parents' behavior at home? Gimme a break!!!!!! [mostly parents don't even listen to our advice at PTMs abt change of the behavior with the child]

"Write down a diary note", this the comment or suggestions that I hear when there is a problem, only to find out that all the diary notes were torn out by the student!!!!!

Then there is professionalism of fellow teachers. Topics, such as, management, planning, communication skills,training are good but no thanks, they are not working out. People - the helping staff - is often unprofessional and try to get personal. Procrastinating and lethargy prevails over them. They can come up with one thousand one reasons for not doing what they were told to do and at the end of the day emphasizing their importance!!!!!!

I don't think that I've a solution for any of these problems, they are just the problems.

One more irritating situation is the linguistic capabilities of the ... umm...everyone. Either we should be proud of the language that we speak or learn the language that we are required to speak at work. I always have problems with language skills of people. [ basically i hv a problem with ppl]. For example, during one of the training sessions, the trainer asked if anyone of us can define "icebreaker activities" and most people thought that activities used to end the boredom are the icebreakers activities!!!!! Worst is that they are not ready to learn even!

Treating parents and students as customers is one of the drawbacks of private schools. I know many teachers who want to own their students in their own personal way; but the management and the parents create hindrance in the process. Let me reassure everyone reading this, in no way a teacher is the enemy of the child, they love the children, and want their very best, but give them a break, stop telling them all the time, what to do and how to do!

Personally, I'll never treat my students like customers, because then I can never be honest with my profession. I might never be able to satisfy a customer, but as a teacher I do my best to satisfy my students.

Customer  is a tricky term to deal with and brings up the image of a hardcore corporate setting; but school brings up nice, warm image of teachers and children, formal yet friendly, neat with a lot of interaction taking place, let it be like this ... let the students be students and teachers be teachers. Don't turn students to customers and teachers into customer services personnels!!!! [i wanted to be a teacher... not a customer services officer]

So, the workshop on 'Customer Services' is useless for teachers. Instead the workshop on dealing with fussy parents and living up to the expectations of students would be more welcome and realistic.

and in the end i would like to request all the people in the school managements all over Pakistan that please treat your teachers with respect, care, love and affection. they run your schools 'businesses' and satisfy your 'customers'. they train your children to be good and successful citizens of the world society and achieve their targets... [which most ppl think that teachers failed to achieve]

and i like being teacher in my own casual way and i'll never do anything to become what they expect of me :P

Today's findings....

i wonder if any one of you felt disloyal when not learning?

i experienced it today. i went to attend a workshop in school. it was basically for maths teachers, but they always put computer teachers with the maths group... so there i was ready to get bored (or so i thought) and waste my time (as a precaution i took a copy of reader's digest with me)but suddenly i felt disloyal to learning!!!!!! i felt as if i was not doing what i was supposed to do there... so i started paying attention and found out these things.

* a circle touching all the sides of a triangle is called an inscribed circle
*to draw means that we do not need compass and
* we are ruled by coordinates (here i forgot spelling of coordinates and wrote it with 'Q' and then i remembered that it's written with 'C'.
*space and time are coordinates
*if you cease the motion of earth the times stops
*time is the flow of events
*quantum mechanics says that if events stop taking place, the time will stop.
* speed is the way through which we can get free from the gravitational force.
* if you are unable to identify all the atoms of hydrogen, then you can say that they are symmetrical with respect to each other.
*global symmetry
*local symmetry
* global means universal
* local means [trainer to forgot to mention this]
* in theory of relativity time will lose its global symmetry.
* twin paradox!!!!! [to lengthy to explain here simply story of two sisters, one moving with the speed of light and one in the normal earth's circumstances... time - a fraction for one and ages for others]
* before big bang time is considered to be zero.
* invariant means never change!!!!
*The zero time is called 'Max Plank Time'
* there are three types of symmetries...
1. Reflected 2. Translated. 3. Rotational
* reflected means inverted by negatives, but the resultant is same. example ur mirror image. [trainer forgot to explain other two!]
* periodic functions repeat themselves after an interval of time.
* sine is always odd.
* cosine is always even!!! [i thought it other way round]

so all this info might not be useful for me in practice because of the subject that i teach [information and communication technology] and the level i teach [4 and 5!] but i felt good after taking these notes. i felt back in my element! :) and in the end it wasn't as bad as i imagined it would be :)

teacher's day

i really wanted to write badly about my teachers today, but somehow i didn't get much time..so all i want to say is thank you teachers for giving me experiences that you gave me :) and when now i am a teacher myself, i realize how difficult it was to put up with me and all the questions that i had [and i still have]

:(

'rebelling' was such an interesting post, but due to some problem it was not published, khair i removed it... it was a lament about the new tax that government is imposing and the attitude of the government, and the minister saying that corruption is their right!!!!!!

now that pervaiz musharaf as well want pardon and jump in the active political scene, things are very confusing... i generally don't talk against the government, though i don't own it as well, [i never went to vote and caused my father to get angry with me!!!] because i believe that it's all for our best, but lately i don't see the point!!!!

help is all that i need.

QUESTIONS OF TODAY'S STUDENTS!!!!

a message for all my fellow teachers who thought that kids doesn't know a thing and please don't tell me that they are westerners and these things do not happen in Pakistan trust me they do :) kids know a lot more than you do please learn :) please, please, please...

Quality of Parenting

i have experienced that in recent years the quality of parenting has gone considerably down, but this fact got proved when i formally joined teaching. these days all parents are interested in are grades and marks, they don't appreciate the value of learning, the joy of learning or simply the experience of learning.

i remember watching 5 minutes cartoon on TV in the morning (7:05 on PTV morning show with chacha jee) and 5 minutes in the evening and that was that, the first gift that i remember that my father got me was a box of color pencils, and we had books, loads of them and then he got us audio cassettes of stories and nursery rhymes. i remember going to parks and book fairs with my parents and siblings, but these things just don't happen today! the gift means an automated car, an expensive bag or dool or something and outing means a trip to restaurant!!!

as the prices of presents went up, so did the expectations. a parent was boasting to me that his child studies 16 hours a day and he got three different tutors come to his place to teaching him different things and on PC he is only allowed to access encyclopedias!!!!!!!! and that kid was rebellious in class, all he wanted to do was talk and talk and talk, not the fault of poor child! he was simply deprived of simple pleasures of childhood.

Second thing that has gone down is the quality of food that parents give to their kids. i remember having to eat cauliflowers and turnips and fish and occasionally a burger and French fries. we used to take home made lunch to school and we never got any money to buy stuff on our own. my mother used to keep candies and cookies at home and we had our quota fixed of them every day [one candy and two cookies]. but now parents would buy their kids pizzas and McDonald's and KFC's food as regularly as possible, not taking care of the amount of calories that kids need or the nutrition!!!! in turn making their kids fat and unhealthy. and the reason for doing this is...we can afford the stuff [in Pakistan, Pizzahut, McDonald's and KFC are considered to be for rich]

just today other teachers in staff room were discussing a problem child who sleeps in the classroom, not for the first two or three periods but the complete school day!!!!! despite a note sent to the parents and a meeting called to convince parents to put their child to be early, there was no response!!!! Mothers love staying up late to watch all the Indian saas bahu soap operas neglecting their child's need of sleep of 9 to 11 hours. just where this will take those poor kids. second thing this habit does to these kids is damaging their language and ruining their innocence and fantasy. God forbid, i'll never ever allow my own child to watch these dramas because of the language they use and the scenes they show and things they talk about [Allah ki pannah!!!]

all in all the conclusion is that parents are ruining the future of their children, they might grow up to be good doctors or engineers but they will never become good citizens and kids if  parents will not put their sincere effort into bringing up their children. sending kids to a big and fancy school is not enough, a child is the mutual responsibility of teacher and parents!!!!!

confusion unlimited 1

well this starts with the blog name and its gonna be a long time before i solves my confusions.

today's confusion: studying in Pakistan.

its been always difficult to find books related to my subjects, whether they were about software engineering or education! the basic subjects like introduction to software engineering has many books available in market but as you climb the ladder up and go for more specific subjects like requirement engineering, software architecture or documenting software design, software process model, the books disappear from market and those that are available are way too expensive for one to afford [thanks to my father, he bought me most of them :)]

and now that i am pursuing a degree in education, there are no authentic books available. books written by local authors are either out of date or incomplete and my instincts tell me not to trust them. event he course outline that we got from university is so out dated that one can easily discard it. the latest book referred for 'school organization and classroom management' was published in 1978!!!!!!!!!!!!!

and now i have problem finding the book on 'teaching of physical sciences'

research is unheard of and even at university level students are afraid of putting forward their ideas in  front of teachers and the arguments they have are the sack of arguments not learning!!!!!

my confusion will never end, i guess. :(