US Teacher At Kendriya Vidyalaya
Matthew M.Sears, mathematics teacher of Hillside New Tech High School, U.S., interacting with students at Kendriya Vidyalaya, Sulur. While the power point presentations are still new to school classrooms here, the students in the U.S. have moved on to creating movies, podcasts and radio programmes. The classes are not based on textbooks and students learn to work in groups. Interacting with reporters, Matthew M. Sears, mathematics teacher at Hillside New Tech High School, U.S., said the teachers there had the creative freedom to prepare the academic curriculum and experiment with various methods of teaching. He is on a Government-sponsored faculty exchange programme to Kendriya Vidyalaya, Sulur, where he would be teaching students for another two weeks. ‘In the U.S., the students are given projects, which have applications in the real world,’ he says. The school where he teaches in the U.S. provides a computer to each student. A classroom has about 30 computers and an LCD projector. The communication between the teacher and the students is mainly through e-mail. As soon as the student logs in, the list of activities for the day is displayed.
The teacher also keeps in touch with the parents of the students on a regular basis to keep track of the child’s development, Mr. Sears says. There is a need to interact with the parents as a majority of them do not spend quality time with their children as both work. A large percentage of the students come from broken families, where the child lives with a single parent. ‘It is necessary to educate the parents on the need to motivate their children,’ he says. The situation is different in India, where the family system is intact and children can expect parental support.
According to Mr.Sears, an education system which did not allow the teacher or the student to exercise creative freedom is stifling. ‘Schools that insist on every student passing help only those students who are born smart or have rich parents,’ he adds. ‘As a culture, the U.S. has made it okay to be bad in maths,’ Mr. Sears says. The number of students opting for higher studies in mathematics and science has dropped. Some of the universities have a higher number of foreign students as there are not enough American takers for them.
‘A problem with teaching world over is that teachers are losing time to be creative and connect with the children.’ Mr.Sears laments. The Indian system of the curriculum is good as it is aligned well. But, it needs to have more connections with the real world. The mathematics teacher of Kendriya Vidyalaya, Sulur, Vamsi Krishna, is teaching in the Hillside New Tech High School as part of the exchange programme.
