“Sometimes the hurdles aren’t really hurdles at all. They are welcome Challenges, tests” – Paul Walker.
I find a sense of resemblance in the words of Paul Walker. To me, challenges are tests of perseverance, zeal, and determination. Every challenge in life teaches something new and I too have learned a lot from the challenges I have faced.
I have had my fair share of challenges. One such challenge I faced was during my stint as a full-time volunteer in teaching for India, wherein I was performing the role of classroom facilitator, teaching math’s, geography and gk to a class of 50+ students. It was my first experience of volunteering in an NGO. I always wanted to contribute to society, and teach for India provided me one such opportunity. As the case is with every new thing you do, you tend to feel a bit uncomfortable, I too was a bit uncomfortable during my first week at teaching for India. I had no prior teaching and classroom management experience when I joined Teach for India and things were really getting out of my hands, I was struggling in managing the class. Kids were undermining my authority and being mischievous. I was in a tensed situation as their unit tests were scheduled to take place by the end of the third week, and I have to prepare them for that.
I discussed this with my colleagues and to my surprise, everyone was going through the same, some were even thinking of quitting. So, after the tiring first week, we met on the weekend and planned out how we are going to manage the class and make learning easy and fun. We did a lot of deliberation and came up with an idea of making learning engaging, by introducing games and quizzes at the end of each class. After deliberating on it we tried it for the first time next week, we did it by dividing the class into teams and each team was awarded points for their right answer, to our utter surprise our plan actually worked, kids found it quite engaging and competitive. We were able to
establish a good rapport with them in the coming days and they became comfortable sharing everyday gossip with us.
But the biggest challenge was yet come, by the end of the second week. I came across a kid who told me that he was physically punished by his parents whenever he used to be mischievous. I thought of it as an isolated event and didn’t pay much heed to it. But in the next few days, I came across more of such incidence, sometimes even the parents told me to physically punish their wards in case they don’t abide by my words. As being someone who has always been averse to physical punishments and knowing how much psychological impact can these have on kids, I thought of acting in this regard. Skeptical though, and having no idea about what to do and how to act, I decided to discuss this with my colleagues. The continuous resorting to physical punishment by parents at home was having an impact on these kids, it was quite reflective in their confidence as well. After discussing it we came up with an idea of organizing a sensitization session aimed at creating a healthy parent-children relationship. There were a lot of thoughts doing round in our minds, whether the parents will turn up for this session or not, how seriously are they going to take us.
All of us wanted to contribute in some way to create awareness in this regard, we felt determined and were able to convince the management for organizing the session.
We decided to organize this session on the parent-teacher meet day, we reached out to each parent and were able to convince them for attending the session
