Innovative Teaching

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The other day a call from a dear friend seeking a few tips on parenting took me several years down memory lane. She complained that her three year old simply refuses to go to school. Advice on parenting, does it really work ? I believe each and every child has his/her own individual mind and loves to be treated accordingly. Parents must keep up on ideas to match with their wards intelligence and preference.

I discovered a vast sea of knowledge in the course of bringing up two children. Life’s first lesson for me, as a parent  is to, not force children into anything but to make them realize that it is they themselves who miss out on the advantage if they do not do what they necessarily ought to.

Here's one such example. Our daughter, our first-born, got so much comfort at home that she refused to go to school. Every morning when it was time to go to school, she would cry, cough and sometimes force herself to even throw up to resist going to school. No amount of coaxing helped her. Even one of us going to school with her and sitting with her in the class was of no use. Waking her up in the morning was a task fit for the likes of a Superman! Worried and disheartened after months of desperate effort, we took up the matter with the Sister Superior of the school and other teachers, coming to a conclusion that we forget the past months, take a break and start afresh.

During this time my parent brain was working overtime for an idea to make our daughter see sense in going to school. Then suddenly I hit upon this game one day while reading a story to her. I discovered her interest in the sentences that I read out from the story books. Narrating this to my husband, we both got ready to set the wheels on motion. On the other hand during that time, my husband, an IAS officer had to leave for down South and stay on for-a while to attend a refreshers course. So we took a trip down South playing the game I had planned to, all this while.

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Let’s start the game now. My husband and I would have fun reading the banners and hoardings aloud, discussing their contents, attracting attention of our daughter. The imagination in some even brought a twinkle to our three year old daughter’s eyes! Gradually, she too started showing interest in knowing what banners and boards had to say and unknowingly joined in the game. We would take long walks reading and discussing only the contents of banners and hoardings. Sometimes I would sing, "Utterly butterly ..." and she would join in "Delicious Amul". I would ask her to point the word "Amul". She would try hard to guess. And thus, finally she asked the much awaited question: whether she too could create words like that. We were almost achieving our goal! I got down to the final part of the game by telling her that these words were nothing but ABCs and their siblings, just placed in different orders to form different words. So during the rest of the trip she was busy placing the alphabets in various orders, juggling them to form different words. Our trip was almost coming to an end when one fine day she asked, “Momma, when do we reach home? I need to go to school tomorrow.” Boy, had we reached our goal!!

picture source : Internet

This elaborate narration is to share with other parents the importance of being innovative and looking out for alternative methods when so required in bringing out the intelligence in our children. Lastly, it is most important to be alert and maintain regular interaction with our children so that we can be up-to-date about their strengths and weaknesses and accordingly take steps to ensure their proper development in every field.