Teach-Me-Not

Graduate-level students do not follow basic directions, write 8 pages when asked to write a 15-page paper, cite popular websites instead of peer-reviewed research papers (or do not cite at all), write twisted sentences like "Of the previously mentioned topics, the latter of the five has by far the most implication ......" and on being graded accordingly, write me emails like, "Professor, I am really disappointed with your grading." (Technically, they are addressing me incorrectly too, but I'll let that pass. I am doctor, not professor, not yet).

Many native English speakers struggle with basic grammar and punctuation, messing their commas and apostrophes, using colloquial language as if they were chatting with their buddies, using words like "cool" in an academic paper and writing "student's" instead of "students" repeatedly. It makes me think, "You only had to learn one language, and you messed that up too?" I won’t even talk about how bad some of their handwriting is. They most likely haven’t done a single day of cursive writing practice.

And for those who got a zero on their assignment for plagiarizing (I used a plagiarism tracker software to show them objective evidence of their plagiarism too), they write me emails like, "I am both shocked and appalled at your plagiarism allegations" and "I am offended at the language used in your email by saying that I plagiarized. This leaves no room for error on your part." Error on my part?

And then, a student wrote half the minimum required length for a final paper, and when graded accordingly, wrote me an aggressive email about how the student was extremely disappointed with my grading (My grading? Not their own writing, or the lack of it?). The student also played the "I am an international student, I was not able to follow directions" card. Understanding how students push your buttons has been a learning experience. I wrote an objective reply, addressing all the concerns with a compassionate stance, letting them know that I understand it is hurtful to get a low grade. However, I could not resist asking one question:

"Can you explain what aspect of you being international contributed to you not following directions or not asking me for clarification?" When a British talks about not following directions written in English, I am not sure what language I should use to give direction.  

I don’t know if they do this with everyone, or just me.

Teaching graduate-level classes here has given me a first-hand picture of what entitlement looks like. I wonder how I can break this pattern and encourage the students to learn from feedback rather than challenge my grading.

There is an extreme end in India where many teachers are treated like gods. And here, when students do not get the grades they expected (their expectations being asynchronous with reality), students will not think twice before treating you like you don’t know your shit. If a few points less (because of their own fault) disappoints them so much, I wonder how they will handle the stress due to constant rejections that is so characteristic of life in academia. The bigger question here is: Is our education merely training us to ace standardized tests like robots, or is it teaching us real life skills, like handling rejections and disappointments in life?

sunshine

Teaching: Then and now

Eleven years ago, I started my career working as a science/math teacher. I did that for a year before going back to grad school. That was the end of my teaching. Eleven years later, I started teaching again. But it's not quite the same anymore.

2006: Students used to call me ma'am, and different variations of it. Math ma'am. Chemistry ma'am. Funny ma'am. Angry ma'am.
2017: Students call me Dr. [My last name]. I keep nudging them to call me by my first name. Even then, an Asian student said, "Sorry, it is not in my culture, I cannot do that."

2006: I was given a syllabus the ICSE board had prepared.
2017: It took me an entire week of blood, sweat and tears to write my syllabus. I put two classes on reliability and validity testing and then went like, naah, not so cool. So I deleted them. Talk about acquiring syllabus superpowers.

2006: I used to feel like a celebrity putting "right" marks and my signatures in red ink, as if I was giving autographs.
2017: Technology has taken away the fun. Now, I grade word documents. And I put those red marks in my own calendar, just for kicks.

2006: I used to start reading the chapter an hour before class.
2017: Now, I spend the entire week reading up not just textbooks, but research papers, Coursera materials, and stuff on the internet.

2006: "Okay, enough questions. Let me continue."
2017: "Any questions?" (And I silently die a little inside when no one asks questions. Are they not engaged? Are they not understanding? Are they not connecting with me? PS: It takes exactly 3.87 seconds for a silence to get awkward)

2006: If I didn't know an answer, I would make it up on the spot.
2017: Now, I just say, "That's a great question. What do you think?"

2006: My comments went into students' evaluation.
2017: Students' comments go into my annual evaluation.

2006: "No one should talk now." (I had too much to say in 50 minutes)
2017: "Let's spend an hour doing student presentations." (I don't think I have enough to say for 3 hours)

2006: After my first class, I must have gone home, watched TV and dozed off peacefully.
2017: After my first class, I kept checking the online roster for 24 hours to make sure that no one had dropped out of the course.

sunshine

What I do for a living?

I have always been interested in learning more about what you do for a living. It doesn’t matter what field you belong to, whether you work for money, work from home, or work in the weekends. I’d love to know what one random day in your work life looks like. By you, I mean anyone in this world, from any location, who might be reading this. When I browse through LinkedIn profile of friends and contacts, I sometimes understand what they do, but most of the times, I do not. I get stuck in jargon. I don’t understand the matlab (meaning) of MATLAB. P2P networking to me means peer-to-peer networking for professionals. Data architecture makes me think of the architecture of European cities.

            If we had to explain to an eight year old about what we do, what would we say? If we had to leave behind all the heavy duty jargon, how would we explain what we do? If we had to get creative and draw on a postcard what we do, what would we draw? It seems like a fun, but challenging project. I think that writing about one’s work in simplified words actually requires a lot of thinking, processing, and strong communication skills. As a writer, who writes for the academic crowd, I know how tempting it could be to get lost in the complexity of ideas when you write. Yet the simple and most eloquent writings are the ones that have been well-thought, structured, and have come from writers with years of practice.

So what do I do for a living?

I teach teachers how to teacher better.

What are my work tools I play with?

A computer. Lots of books. Lots of data analysis software, both statistical and qualitative. A notepad. A pen. My brain. And a lot of creative ideas.

And what does a random workday look like for me?

            Well, I do a lot of discrete things. Let me choose one in particular that might interest you. J I’ll try to leave out any academic jargon.

            I watch 10-12 hours of videos every week. Imagine having a big computer screen and Bose headphones at work, and the fun of watching movies every day, and being paid for it. I watch and score 8-10 videos every week. These are graduate level or undergraduate level science courses that professors across the US teach. Someone records these lectures and sends them to me. Sometimes, I go to these classes, camera and tripod in hand, and record them myself.

            Every morning, the first thing I get to work, I plug on my earphones, and watch these videos. Sitting in one place makes me restless, so I munch on puffed rice while I watch. Buttered popcorn would be great, but I figured out that puffed rice is healthier. I am not kidding when I say that I have multiple containers of puffed rice stocked up at my desk.

            These videos are anywhere between an hour to two hours long. I note everything they say, everything they do (or do not do), even how many times they say, “Do you have any questions?” After I am done, I score their teaching. There is a set protocol for this that contains 25-30 questions, with five different scales for each question. I score them, and so do others in my team. Then we sit together and discuss our ratings, and their justification. Sometimes, our ratings match, and sometimes, they do not. That is why I take detailed notes about what is being done in class. We discuss our ratings all the more when they do not. This recalibrates the way we see things when we score the next video.

            We do statistical analyses on our scores to see how effective teachers teach, and what good teachers do to make their classes more effective (and enjoyable). I moved to the US for my PhD, and always wondered how undergraduate courses were taught. Now, I know it all. I have watched videos for every science subject from all over the US- chemistry, biology, physics, astronomy, biochemistry, you name it. Isn’t that wonderful? It is like sitting in classes and not having to pay tuition. And then at the end of the class, you get to say what was good and what was not so good about the class.

            Of course I explained things in a simplified way, and it involves more that sitting with food and enjoying a video. Every minute of what you watch is important. You cannot doze off in the middle of a boring class. I have grown so addicted to watching class lectures that I feel that something is amiss in my weekends.

            Care to share a snippet from what your work looks like, in a simplified way, so that even a child can understand what you do? If you write about it, do share the link with me.

sunshine

Happy Teachers’ Day

Good old nostalgic times. On teachers’ day, I was reminded of all the good time I had when I used to teach in Calcutta. It was my first job, I was 24, fresh out of college, and thought I would change the world. Lot of people were surprised, even disappointed, and I somewhat understand why. A measly pay was one thing, and social perception was another. Bright students were supposed to be doctors, engineers, and lawyers, and I can see why such is the perception. Even a professor had a far more social recognition compared to a school teacher. People who had the ability to become something in life did not become school teachers. They designed chips, developed languages, and signed million dollar deals.

Surely I worked with colleagues who were bright, energetic, and had a similar philosophy as mine, where they wanted to change the perception of teachers. But they were only a handful. Most teachers were tired, lethargic, and opposed to change. It seemed a certain degree of boredom had seeped into their bones over the years. Ironically, they did not want to learn anything new. I was faced with some degree of resistance when I tried changing the pattern of questions to incorporate more multiple choice questions to help students prepare for the all India entrance exams they were to take later. My colleagues were used to doing things a certain way, and they did not see why a freshly out of college teacher should bring in reforms. I used to be euphemistically reprimanded for finishing my corrections and setting question papers early, and this might create a certain expectation for them from the school principal. I used to finish work early so that I could go home and enjoy, and do a hundred different things outside my work.

Soon, I realized what people had meant when they had shown surprise about my decision to teach in a school. I started to feel stagnation. I realized I could only do so much, and become so much as a teacher. I did not even have a masters in education, and this meant despite my quality of work, my pay scale would always be in the lowest rung, even less than others who had a bachelors with an M.Ed. Surely I could motivate children to go on to become rocket scientists and mathematicians, but that is where I would stay. I enjoyed every bit of my work during the present, but the future looked bleak. I loved my students, and they loved me back. I would wake up at 5 every morning and get ready with much enthusiasm, eager to go to school. Imagine how many of us get to work where they are all eager and cannot wait to reach office. Ironically, as much as I loved my job, I moved past it.

A friend once told me that although she loved her then boy friend, she had to move on because she did not see a progressive future with him. I was surprised, wondering how you could leave someone you loved just because you were ambitious. But this is exactly what I did too. I applied to a bunch of schools in the US and moved to Seattle the first opportunity I got.

Although I look back at my first job as a teacher with much fondness, I realize now that the decision I made was for my own good. I did not see myself as a teacher with that measly pay 10 years down the line. I needed intellectual development. I needed to feel and experience the world. I needed greater challenges. I moved on.

However, that experience of teaching left a long term impact on me. Years later when I was done with my US masters and working in the industry, I decided to come back to school to finish a PhD. The reason? I am training myself to become a professor. And it has been one hell of a challenging experience, doing research and training myself long term to be able to teach in a university. But I realized this is what I eventually wanted to do, be associated with school in some capacity, teach, and motivate others to follow their dreams. This might sounds very clichéd and dreamy, but I could not see myself working in the industry any longer. So I am back to what I have always loved doing- being in school. And for this, I thank my job as a school teacher in Calcutta. It made me realize how much I love to teach and be in academia. It also made me realize how I needed to move past it, dream bigger, create bigger challenges for myself, and push myself harder. No matter what I go on to become in life, a part of my identity will always be that 24-year old, starry-eyed math and science teacher whose job and occupation meant the world to her.

Happy Teachers’ Day everyone – We are what we are because of our teachers, for all the little experiences life was made of, and for that internal compass that guides us and eventually leads us to do what we are the best and hopefully the happiest doing.

sunshine

5 Years

It’s a nostalgic day for me. It’s Children’s Day alright, but today is also the 5^th anniversary of my first job. Yeah, remember those days when I had recently started blogging? Those posts amuse me, embarrass me, even confuse me. It all seems from a different lifetime, things have changed so much. I was changed so much. This was my first real job, no, not pocket money earned through tuitions as a student, but a full-time, real job. I was 24 then. Ambitious, starry eyed, with full of energy and enthusiasm, ready to face anything in life head on. I was in love with life then. I am still in love, but it’s a different kind of love now, and a different kind of life now. Nothing bothered me then, not even the measly amount I earned back then (I am told I was the lowest paid), not the fact that I was a teacher and had to be serious with the students, or the fact that teachers didn’t have much of a social reputation compared to say engineers or doctors. Every morning I woke up at 5, all dressed and ready to face a new day.

Things were always eventful in school. Children were always up to something. I loved the math and physics lessons I taught. I would eagerly wait to grab the marker pen and start scribbling on the board. I loved the fact that as I spoke, so many children, all young and impressionable, listened to me and enlightened themselves. I loved the fact that my children (well, most of them) enjoyed science and math. I loved the fact that I was so much thinner and younger. Children couldn’t hide their curiosity to know my age and if I was married. I once told them I was married and had five kids at home. You should have seen their faces.

Eventually I learnt the names of everyone in my class. I even knew the handwriting of every student in my class. It was my only job where work never seemed like work. It seemed like fun. I have worked in different positions ever since, a toxicologist, a graduate student, a research assistant, but my best memories come from my job as a teacher. Then why did I leave my job and move to the U.S., you may be wondering? Because I was young and wanted to see the world. I hadn’t really planned my job as a teacher, it just happened. I had finished my masters, applied for a PhD abroad, and had a couple of months till I heard back from them. I was basically sitting at home doing nothing. It was then that my job happened to me. By the time I had started working, I already had big plans in life for the following year.

Have I ever had second thoughts about leaving my job and moving? You would be surprised to know that the answer is a yes. There was a brief moment when I seriously wanted to ditch my plans of moving to the U.S. and continue working as a teacher in Kolkata. But then, they paid me too less, and I was too eager to see the world. Life gave me an opportunity to go explore the world, and I grabbed it. I don’t regret my decision once. It was the best decision I could have made under those circumstances. But even today, my job as a teacher remains my favorite job. Working as a teacher gave me a whole new perspective about what I was capable of doing, and what I loved to do. This is why even after 5 years, I fondly remember my first day in school.

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Old School Thoughts

While summarizing my entire trip to Kolkata, this is one moment that takes the cake. This morning, I visited my old school, my first job ever months after I had finished my masters. Readers who have followed my blogs during 2005-2006 know how much the school meant to me. I would regale tales of interesting (and sometimes not so interesting) episodes of what happened at school, with my colleagues, the kids, and even their parents.

After almost four years, I visited my old school. Even as I got off the metro and started to walk the 10 minutes stretch towards the building, I could feel reliving my old life again, when I used to walk that stretch at 7am everyday. Donning a saree or a traditional salwar suit, dupatta in place and all, I would be ready by 6am every morning, 5 days a week, happily taking the metro. Not a single day had felt monotonous or filled with drudgery. I used to be a mass of high energy, smiling and running about with the attendance register at 7:30 am sharp. At 24, I was the second youngest teacher in my school.

I left that life I so very loved for two reasons. First, it paid me peanuts, and unless I was contemplating marrying a banker or a software engineer minting money in Kolkata, I had no chances of doing well financially. Secondly, I had already set my mind (and heart) on getting a taste of America ever since I had entered the masters program and realized I wouldn’t be doing anything worthwhile if I continued to live in Kolkata. The job was a fortuitous accident.

Back to the present, it was an amazing experience to visit school again. I didn’t really get to meet the students I taught because they are all (thankfully) out of school now. But being a small school, I remember the face of every kid from junior classes I did not teach. My shock came when I saw the same faces on much taller bodies now. The kids I last saw in classes 4 or 5 are now preparing for boards, and have doubled in height. Some of them recognized me and smiled shyly, but I had come at a wrong time when the kids were getting ready to go home. I am surely going to be back in school again to meet them all.

The teachers were as shocked seeing me as I was seeing the kids, this time due to breadth issues and not height issues. Thanks to the way people socially conduct themselves in India, no one made a secret of their shock in seeing me look much “broad” than what I used to be. One of the teachers actually told me what the kids had told them 4 years ago, that they liked me because I was not old and not fat. I could laugh out loud at their innocence, knowing well that probably every teacher they have had was old, stern looking, obese, and taught them in an extremely boring slash soporific way or gave them lots of homework.

I received a grand reception from the teachers and my principal. I sat there for hours in the staff room, chatting about old times. Even the new teachers knew my name, so much they had heard of me. They told me about school, asked me how my life was, and even told me that I had not changed a bit (except for my breadth of course). I was made to sit in the same chair I used to, and it felt like going back in time and living all those moments you had spent teaching, correcting, laughing, arguing, and enjoying. I remember how I used to call G almost every day then, animatedly regaling everything that had happened in school that day. G was in B-school then and am sure barely understood my reason for excitement at how a kid had cleaned his hand using my dupatta or had discovered some weird law of multiplication to get an answer that matched the answer at the back of the math book. Later in life, I have worked as a toxicologist, at a much higher pay scale, attending conferences and preparing scientific reports (though the term sounds more fancy that it actually is). But my teaching job still remains (and shall always remain) my favorite.

So I decided to go back to school to teach, and to volunteer helping the teachers with the exams before the school closed for summer vacation. Of course this would mean waking up early and reaching school by 7:30 am everyday. But I have decided, much to the disappointment of my mother who feels I should relax at home and enjoy my vacations, that I am going to spend my time doing something I really love to do, even if it is just for a few weeks and doesn’t pay me anything. My incentive doesn’t lie in earning a few thousand rupees here. It lies in doing something I really love to do, and to get back to the routine of a regular job.

I’ll always love being a teacher. I know this for sure, given the way I felt living through every happy emotion once again in those few hours I visited school. So this blog will hopefully see a few interesting posts on how the children behave themselves in class and during the exams next. I am all smiles.

sunshine

A Class Apart

New year brought with it something good for me after all – an opportunity to teach a class at the local university. It so happened that these people were looking for a guest lecturer to teach a single class on the concepts of air pollution. Given that I am happy to teach anytime (provided I know the concepts), and with all the time I have these days, I was more than willing to pitch in.

So here I was teaching a class after almost 3.5 years. And it was different. First, it was not my school back in India, and this was just one class. This was my first ever teaching experience in the US, even if it was just one class for an hour. The kids were not really kids, they were undergraduate students who don’t really scream and shout and do funny things in class (like my kids back in Kolkata used to). Air pollution is somewhat vague a topic and one could babble for months. So I had to carefully make my slides, knowing where to draw the line so that the students didn’t doze off right after the lunch break, and being extra-prepared for the Q&A session. Overall, things went well.

I realized that even after all these years, I really enjoy teaching, going to a class prepared with content to talk about. Perhaps the year will bring much more with it, more opportunities, more classes, more chances to get back my rightful place in the industry. Till then, I am ready to bask in the glory of whatever little opportunities I get to do things useful, and things I enjoy doing.

sunshine