Open-book system and its consequences........

                   Innovative ways of teaching were quite inspirational to me especially when I had to coax my Arts and Commerce students into learning Economic Analysis for the Board Exam.
                   I have personally felt that students who opted for Arts were all so creative in their own ways.  As far as my observation is concerned cramming theories into their brains were so impractical.
                   With board exams fast approaching I was more puzzled and concerned not knowing how to enable my students who had been scoring very poor marks for their preparatory exams to get a pass mark for the Boards!
                    Well, I had called all the weak students for a re-exam. They had the pressure of clearing all the subjects prior to the boards with a pass-mark that would entitle them for their hall-tickets.
                     As any teacher of Economics knows that just two to three days of preparation is practically impossible for a student to rush through the entire syllabi.
                    Here I was up with the open-book system for the re-exam. All those who were so down in their morale having no idea of the number of times they would have to take up the re-exams to get their hall tickets were in fact so thrilled and happy about the open-book system for the re-exam scheduled.
                    Truly, I have never seen this enthusiasm in them. Urging them to find out the correct answers and making them jot  the answers down correctly as how it had to be done became my duty as their teacher.
                     Though it was tedious, they did openly agree that they had never been so serious about their work.
                     In fact, it was laborious indeed cross checking and following up their effort for a long stretch of three and a half hours with a group of sixty-five students seated in a big hall.
                    Meticulous work of my students did deserve meticulous follow-up and indeed I could realise the pain and the strain involved for the teacher in the process.  Who said innovative teaching is easy?  It's· rewarding for a student; but very very painful for a teacher.

From then to now.......

            There was a time when getting the job of my passion surpassed even the geographical boundaries of my home......all that haunted me was to fulfill my loving passion. Little did I realize that it was taking me for good to a shore that was far away from mine...different language, and culture.

              Well, but it was my true passion. I adapted to my teaching job like the duck in the water. But slowly and painfully I realized that I had to infuse myself to a language that was unknown to me....Whatever might have been your passion; anything that doesn't help you to be down with the language of your students is not going to help you as a teacher....opined by better-half. There it was a shudder to me. How could I start with learning something new? Well, I started off with my maiden work of learning Kannada from the scratch. Slowly I discovered that somewhere it's foot-hold was similar to that of my Malayalam. There again I started my voyage into the study of Kannada. Voraciously reading all possible fiction from magazines it ended up with slowly teaching my children their Kannada lessons. Even today I fumble, but still, it again has become an obsession for me. Now, of course, it's given me an extra hand to help out my students who come from Kannada medium to wade through their initial years of collegiate education in Economics my teaching subject.

         Life has taken me far away from my mother-tongue....Yet the immense love for my mother-tongue has taught me to love and respect others as well.