Of This and That

The other day, we were watching "Jab we met" at home. Not that we hadn't watched it earlier, but just that for lack of anything else to do, we all sat and watched it. Towards the later half, Shahid Kapoor goes back to Manali in search of Kareen Kapoor and after finding her, insists that she leave with him right away. At this scene, my wife commented, "How can she just run away like that? She is a teacher in the school. Doesn't she have to inform anyone there?". To this my kid added a rejoinder - "Mummy, our teachers at CIS also run away like that!" :-) It so happens, that many teachers have suddenly left CIS in past and no wonder my kid feels that way :-). BTW my kid no longer studies at CIS.

Like I talked about sharing earlier, teaching kids to talk truth and nothing but the truth is also important aspect of their growth. But then, things can go wrong at funny places. The other day, a weekend, I had a function at office in which families were invited. This was fixed for many weeks. My kid's school, a true believer in Murphy, informed the kids on a day before that there will be parent teacher's meeting on this particular day. Normally we don't miss any of these, but it also so happened that my wife had had an elaborate discussion (almost like a verbal duel) with almost all teachers at the school a week prior to this. To top it, this meeting was scheduled at 7.45 am on a weekend. Getting up early is part of our life daily, but we want to keep our weekends relaxed and this function at office was about at 11 am. Given all facts so far, we had decided to skip this meeting and go only to the office function. All is well that ends well. However the next working day a...

They say that just by knowing it all you cannot be a good teacher. Teaching requires specific skill set and good teachers are those who constantly innovate and keep modernizing their styles. There are two styles in particular at my kid's school that I find particularly amusing. 1. Who says you should only teach in English? You could teach in Hindi, Sanskrit etc, but obviously if you are teaching languages. Surprisingly, however an English teacher for my kid, teaches in Marathi :-) 2. All unit tests for my kid actually start with oral exam and then later written papers. Oral exam, I guess is to figure out speaking abilities, body language, expression etc for the students, which is good. But they have at least one oral exam which is actually a written test :-). The teacher reads out the questions and the students all write answers and give the paper to her. What a novel way to take oral exam!!!!

This is one question that keeps nagging parents. Do I teach me kid to share or not to share? Obviously, sharing is good, but there are equally obvious situations when you can't share, like during exams. The other day my kid came back from her school and quizzed us this aspect. The situation she encountered was something like this: She had her unit tests going on and having finished her test paper, she handed it over to the teacher. The teacher had said that the students who had done their papers, could do what ever they liked without disturbing. Knowing very well that post the school, she will have an oral exam from her mother about the paper, she decided to pen down some of the answers in her rough copy. Another student thought to make better of this and tried to steal some glances from what she was writing and being the good student that she was, she gave him a stern look and covered her copy. The teacher noticed some activity and came over to check out. My kid explained the matt...