Things I can change and things I cannot -1

A few of my friends have expressed concern over my last post. For 3 days continuously when I couldn't sleep at night, the third day I got up and just penned down what was coming into my mind. It didn't help my sleep, but it is making me write this post. This is my attempt to apply the serenity prayer to my life; mainly to my teaching and things which surround that.

God, grant me the serenity

To accept the things I cannot change;

Courage to change the things I can;

And wisdom to know the difference.

I think I have been having trouble in the last sentence or may be at times I try too hard and take my failures to heart before I realise that it was a line 2 and not a line 3.

There are many things being done by Zilla Parishad in Maharashtra to change the education system, most probably as a run in to the implementation of RTE. One major thing is the way in which student learning is being assessed [moolyamapan (: ]. Instead of just having 4 unit tests and 2 semester exams, they have put in place formative assessments, which assess the students' daily learning. The summative assessments, which are given lesser importance, replaces the unit and semester tests. The students are supposed to be evaluated in 5 different ways (orals, written, projects, homework, class work, group discussions etc). This is supposed to reduce the pressure on the students and also is recognising the fact that different students perform differently in different tests and making them all just write, is not really going to show their real mastery.

Now when it comes to implementation, the whole point is lost. In my school now the last week of the month, no teachers are in classrooms. All of them are preparing their formative assessment reports. The students and left to do what they please in their classrooms wasting precious time (their favourite past time being shouting and howling, especially the seniors). I first explained to the senior teacher who is responsible for getting the records in, the actual idea behind these changes. I also told her that it is not about just making these reports, but it is about observing and testing the students in such a way that the results can be put to use in improving the teaching process. She responded by telling me that the Zilla Parishad people are only going to check the records and they are not going to come and observe the classrooms.

The next day when she reminded me that I need to make separate sheets for each student and one sheet for all, I asked her whether we can keep the work lesser. Since she thought I was worried about my spending too much time in doing that, she told me to just use my class time to do that. I told I am not bothered about the time I spend, as I need to prepare the sheets for only 13 students and it is not going to take much time and I will do that at home. By this time I was pleading with her and I told her that I am only worried about the other teachers spending their class time. By the time she left my class I was in tears and she just couldn't understand why I was crying in front of my kids for a silly matter like that.

This was a thing which I wanted to change, thought I could, but failed miserably.