The joy of teaching English

Teaching is the noblest profession of all. the destiny of a nation is shaped inside the four walls of the class room. A teacher should find joy in his/her profession. otherwise, he/she can not find joy on the faces of children/students/student teachers. I think that I am a teacher student. Mr Rajagopalachari,a famous educationist ,statesman says ”if you go to a school, look at the faces of the children .If you find happiness and joy on their faces ,let the school to continue, otherwise, simply close it down. Any teacher can find the inexpressible job when the lesson goes on as well as he/she planned or better than he/she planned. A teacher should come to the class  well prepared with a good lesson plan. If it is teaching practice, he/she should be confident, innovative with proper teaching learning material.

     I would like to narrate my unforgettable and highly joyful experience of teaching English to a batch of 30 in service English teachers as part of my teacher development program in Bangalore in 2005. I was allotted the topic gender bias. Since I was considered to be the best teacher participant, the lady professor, my fellow participants were observing me with a lot of expectancy.

   I came to the class well in time meticulously prepared with proper TLM and a lot of confidence and enthusiasm. I started my lesson with the quotation by confucious” What we hear we forget, what we see we remember , what we do we learn”. I was like a warrior with a lot of armory and ammunition. I was able to prove that there was gender bias using theological, textual, historical, social and political evidence.Every body was convinced that women was segregated,discriminated,oppressed and surpressed every where especially in India  The frequency between the teachers and me was the same. There was great symphony between them and me. In that  state difference between the teacher and the taught was non-existent. The lesson was so well that even the grave and moody professor was applauding me and joining in the teaching now and then. Finally the lesson came to an end .There was joy on the faces of the in service teachers, my fellow participants, the professor and of course on mine.some of  the participants profusely complimented me.. When the professor was about to leave, I asked her for her impressions of my lesson. She said, “even I could not have taught the lesson better than you. The lesson could not have been better” and left the room. I felt the real Joy of teaching (English).I hope all of you might have had similar experiences. Why don’t you narrate your joyful experiences of  teaching?

Yours sincerely,

JVL Narasimha Rao

India