Handling difficult questions while teaching

Obviously, sometimes, its innate human nature to be in difficulty in the course of teaching. Some childish students' stupid questions leads such problem in a classroom. Since I have been teaching in Nepal, I have faced a lot of such silly questions raised by students and many of my friends quit their job due to stress. Thus, I am giving some strategies for proper handling of difficult questions while teaching.

First strategy to handle the difficulty is finding the relevancy of the question. If the question is not pertinent to the particular area where you are teaching, you can tell them to answer after completing the formal class somewhere outside of your class. And, if the topic is pertinent to your topic and  you do not know the answer, you tell them to answer tomorrow and give them other practice questions like this. Then, student may think you are smarter.

Second strategy is to identify the type of students who are raising you the questions. If the student is asking  you just to be smart, detect and ask him other questions to defend. Otherwise, if the question is from genuine side, give them extra practice work, thereby pondering about its solution. Then, they will ramble on their practice work.

And the last strategy is creating the environment of competition among students for difficult questions. You can create the ambient of competition if the question is very hard. You can generate a lot of solutions from students side from their heterogeneous ideas. They forget all for competition and bury themselves in the topic.

In conclusion, the main strategy to handle problematic situation is to make them even more busy on that situation.

Young lecturers are in demand

I had been mulling for several years about why young are being accepted by Nepali students. I had also been in search of finding the reason behind the rejection of an old experienced lecturer. I do not know how much I am correct into my digging but it is a reality in Nepal. And, it’s true that most of the colleges have more young lecturers than many years experienced ones. The main reasons for rejecting old experienced lecturers are as follows:

Initially, it matters a lot about in which level we teach because if we teach young people, obviously they need teacher of their time rather than old one. They do not want to give their time for study merely but also other recreational activities which were not provided by our traditional teachers. What our old teacher wanted was that to exploit parrot learning and showed atrocious behavior in the name of punishment. They did not like to be according as students wants.

Furthermore, simply experience doesn’t matter at all if they cannot enjoy with their students. What I found in Nepal is that owing to lack of peripheral knowledge, even experienced teachers are being rejected. They were not updated with the latest technology and system. They used to teach in traditional system which was not preferred by student today because we must update with technology.

In the contrary, young lectures are being successful here in these cases. They are doing what young students wants. They are trying to give their time for not only study but also other recreational stuffs. They are making nice team work with students for academic and professional activities. Similarly, young lecturers are updating themselves with the latest technologies and modern teaching paradigms. Thus, they are succeeding in their way.

In conclusion, it is not always good symptom that callow lecturers are in great demand here if they do have sufficient knowledge. In the name of preferring young ones, it is not good practice to discourage an experienced one. Instead, old experienced should learn from youngs’ exemplary works and update themselves.

Student Psychology and Teaching.

Today, the class was very funny for me because  while I was teaching in front of my students, they were shouting at me.I was unhappy considering that they were not getting me. Whenever I started repeating every lecture, they were shouting even more loudly. They were shouting because their eyes were concentrating to the live cricket score on their mobile rather than study. Due to a bit large hall, I was not seeing about the situation of every student. After knowing such, I stopped my class and started playing jokes with students. Then after, I told them to pay attention towards their study and they paid their attention. We should understand what they want.

Furthermore, It may be my weakness to be so loose for those activities. I have heard that many teachers are used to giving physical punishment in the name of controlling those behaviors, but I am not in favor of those strategies. Students are the pollard of a plant. Once they are tortured, how can we dream of nice plant? how can they give nice fruits in the future? Really, rather than giving such torture, they should be self-taught.

But, leaving them freely, thinking about liberty merely, may be not be a solution to make those buds stronger enough. What we need to do is to understand their psychology so that we can use their brain cent percent. Any one can teach , but its difficult to find those teacher who are meticulous about students interest.We have to create the homely environment while teaching rather than being cruel and brutal, which  many teachers are acclimating such strategies today.