The Pedagogy Puzzle

Snippets from a recent work trip to Udaipur that touched me in different ways... Lal An elderly man approached the curb in his white Maruti Dzire. The license plate confirmed that this was my reserved Uber ride with Lal from Maharana Pratap Airport to the hotel. As we headed west towards the city, Lal and I struck up a conversation set against the idyllic backdrop of the Aravalli hills cloaked in the rays of the evening sun. When I told him that I work in the education sector, his eyes lit up! It turned out that he worked with Seva Mandir in the early 2000s for around 5 years in classrooms as a volunteer teacher. Once he got to know that I taught for 3 years in Pune, he animatedly began describing his classroom experiences! ☺️ He shifted to driving cabs as a profession because the volunteer teacher role didn't pay him enough to support his family and he didn't possess the necessary educational qualifications to rise up the ranks there. 😥 The passion with which he spoke about...

On printing my boarding pass at the airport in Ahmedabad, I realised that my flight was delayed by an hour and now scheduled to take off at 9:10 p.m. A silver lining was that I was there with some colleagues who had flights to other cities. So, I could get in some informal time with them! 😄 Oddly, though the boarding time was 8:25 p.m., a final call announcement rang out at around 8:25 p.m. itself. After bidding adieu to my colleagues, I entered the plane with a glimmer of hope that the delay might not be much after all! 😅 In a few minutes, boarding was completed and I expected that we'd begin taxiing soon. 9:10 p.m. came and went. A palpable sense of restlessness began to set in with a few passengers questioning the crew about the reason for the delay. A doctor, who was travelling with his wife and 2-year-old son, told the crew that he had surgeries lined up next morning and needed to get home to sleep! 9:40 p.m. - we were still parked in the bay with no sign of reversing out to...

We were 75 minutes into class and her engagement and grasp of the content was wonderful! 😊 She had, with minimal guidance, derived the formula for the length of an arc of a circle by applying proportional reasoning. When a student makes a cross-topic connection like this, it is rewarding!  😇  Now, we were solving questions to cement her understanding of the concept. We reached the last question in the set: The second hand of a clock is 10 cm long. How far does the tip of the second hand travel in 20 seconds? She racked her brains for close to 10 minutes before concluding that she was stumped! 😵 I asked her to share where she was getting stuck. She replied that she didn't know the speed at which the hand was moving - so, she couldn't find the distance that the tip had travelled. I realised that she was thinking of the {speed = distance ÷ time} formula. So, I gave her a hint that knowing the speed at which the hand was moving wasn't required in this case. In addition, I...

My post on happiness  was inspired by a cover story published in The Week  - a magazine that I've subscribed to for years now. This post owes its origins to The Week cover story on Dr. S. Somanath, the chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). Authored by correspondent Mr. Nirmal Jovial, it paints a nuanced picture of how Somanath became one of ISRO's most influential leaders and drove the creation of some of India's path-breaking rockets and missions. Here, I will examine how two aspects - upbringing and community - influenced his journey. (Note: This article is not available online so I have picked out relevant extracts from the physical copy of the magazine.)

I admit I was curious. That's what led me to install a dating app in the first place... Some say that curiosity killed the cat. After all, I was plunging into uncharted territory here... Thankfully, after more than a year, I'm not that cat! In fact, I've been lucky to meet some truly wonderful women... What have I learned through this roller coaster of a ride? Here's an attempt at synthesising it all...

This post is inspired by a magazine's cover story on happiness  (The Week; April 23, 2023 edition) . I have been a subscriber of The Week for years now and must commend them on their balanced journalism and the great lengths to which they go to bring readers enriching content!

I wrote the following piece in 2011 while I was at BITS. I've made a few edits but retained the essence and core content. The motivation behind digging into my digital archives is that, in a few days, it will be 10 years since I last stepped foot on campus! 😮 Truly hope to make a trip there with friends soon! ~ o ~ x ~ o ~

Courtesy Covid-19 and its widespread impact, our lives can now be split into three distinct epochs - Before Covid (BC), During Covid (DC) and, assuming no further catastrophic waves and variants, After Covid (AC). As I live in India: BC refers to the time before March 24, 2020 - the date we were introduced to the concept of a lockdown and full-time  work from home (WFH) . DC refers to the time from that date till about March 2022 (approximately two years). During this time, the fight against Covid-19 saw valleys of despair (first, second and third waves) and peaks of hope (vaccination drives and overcoming the waves). AC refers to the time from April 2022 onwards.

It began with  Wordle  on 13-01-2022. Being an avid puzzle enthusiast for years, I got hooked on it fairly easily! 😅 The simplicity - guessing a 5-letter word in 6 tries with clues emerging based on the guesses - definitely aided its stickiness. (as of July 9, 2022)

The mental game is the entire game. The physical is only an extension of what you're capable of doing mentally... mental toughness and the power of your mind is just really unbelievable. - Phil Davis, mixed martial arts ~ o ~ x ~ o ~ I was 2-5 0-30 down on my serve. My arm was fatigued from the rigours of the previous sets and my legs felt sluggish. Usually reliable, my serve had deserted me while my opponent was sailing through his games. The sun, gradually becoming more intense, added to the perspiration and exhaustion that I was experiencing. I was ready to throw in the towel, dab rackets at the net and end my misery.

These 7 seemingly innocuous words come together 12 times as starred footnotes in a popular class 10 mathematics textbook. A textbook that is likely to have been consulted by around 21,50,000 students (perhaps more) during the 2020-21 academic year. When do these notes appear? Is there a pattern to the excluded content? What is the subliminal message that it might send to children? Is the note subtly symptomatic of bigger issues that plague the Indian education system?

Over the past year, with travel options limited, my family and I explored day treks around Bangalore - you'll be surprised to find the number of quaint and pristine trails there are which aren't commercialised or overrun by tourists! 😀 Some scenes from these outings left strong and lasting impressions  at a visceral level - ones that I can vividly recall even now, months later. I realised that these experiences, nestled in the lap of nature, can be quite immersive and educative - the mind meanders through random trains of thought and reflection that don't find the time to run during the humdrum of a routine work-from-home week.

Through a mix of initiative, circumstances and luck, I have led a team of mathematics content developers since August 2019. On one of my cycling trips , I started reflecting on what I had learnt through my experiences as a team lead. ~ o ~ x ~ o ~ One of my first realisations was that I disliked the term 'people manager' . I fundamentally didn't believe that my teammates needed to be 'managed'; rather, I felt that they should be guided in their growth as content developers. Products and projects need to be managed; people don't. I frequently told myself to never lose sight of the fact that my teammates are people and not 'human resources' (another phrase that I am really not a fan of! 😅).

As a token of appreciation for our participation in  this workshop , we were given a copy of  The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way  by Amanda Ripley. In the book, the author analyses educational systems in Finland, Poland and South Korea through the eyes of students, teachers, parents and administrators to try and understand what makes kids in these countries perform exceptionally well on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) test. I had written posts related to the power of expectations ( here's the first one ) in the South Korean context.  In this piece, I'll look at aspects of the teacher education system in Finland that stood out to me. While a comparison with India's teacher education system is not the focus of this post, I firmly believe that we (India) can improve in this sphere by adopting some of Finland's practices.

From some of the posts on this blog (examples: one , two , three and four ), it is evident that I have vivid and fond memories of my years in Pune. This led me to wonder: what are the lasting memories that my children have about me and our time together - both inside and outside the classroom? To answer this question, I carried out a single-question survey, coded my children's responses and came up with some interesting findings. What did I ask? Below, in italics, are the exact words that I wrote in a personal message to each child. The text in purple varied depending on the child.

He zipped up his windcheater, took in deep breaths of the fresh, cold morning air and hopped onto his trusted seven-speed steed. Blending muscle memory and hardwired survival instincts, he expertly navigated the craters, potholes, bumps and rubble on the pitch-black city roads. The emptiness, the silence... what a stark contrast to the snarled-up traffic that weaved its way through the city during the day! Chirping birds, rising from their slumber, and territorial stray dogs, with their short, sharp barks, greeted him as he gathered momentum. Once warmed up, he clicked his cycle into a higher gear and headed towards the outskirts. The sky had turned a pale, murky blue as it awaited the full force of the sun's morning rays. With each passing kilometre, he felt invigorated and knew, deep down, that this was going to be another memorable ride...

Previous post: In-person vs. online - the similarities (part 1) In the first postlet (linked above), I focused on the similarities between in-person classes at school and classes in the online environment. In this postlet , I will interweave the findings of research studies with my practical experiences as a math teacher to illustrate the differences between these two modes of teaching/learning with a continued focus on one-to-one classes as that is my area of expertise . A point worth mentioning here - there are four types of classes that we could technically experience and analyse: classes in schools (one-to-many and in-person) private in-person tuition classes (one-to-one and in-person) online classes being conducted by schools during the Covid-19 pandemic (one-to-many and online) private tuition classes over the web (one-to-one and online) I have extensively taught in contexts #1 and #4 and taught, to a limited extent, in context #2 when sitting down with individual children af...

Previous post:   Setting clear expectations So far, I have covered  how/why I took up online teaching , my first interaction with parents and children, how I plan/execute the trial session and setting expectations with my students. A common suggestion that I received in comments on this series was to compare and contrast in-person classes with online classes. I believe that this is a good time to explore this topic and I plan to divide this exploration into two postlets. In this first postlet, I will interweave the findings of research studies with my practical experiences as a math teacher to paint a picture of the similarities between  regular in-person classes in school and classes in  the online environment ( with a focus on one-to-one classes as that is my area of expertise ). I think that this will provide necessary grounding, not just for the next postlet, but for the series as a whole.

Previous post: The first class Each child is unique and enters a class with different mindsets and experiences related to mathematics (specifically) and the teaching-learning process (generally). Considering the grades that I cover (6 to 12), subject teaching at school is the norm; consequently, children are exposed to a spectrum of teachers and pedagogies and adapt depending on who is at the blackboard (or projector in a technology enabled classroom!). When I think back to my own school days, there were teachers who instantly commanded respect and attention while there were others who seemed to bring out our most raucous sides! 😆 Thus, setting expectations was one of my priorities for the class following the trial session. As I was building our relationship from scratch without the benefit of face-to-face interaction, this assumed even more importance!

Previous post: The foundational bricks After the opening conversation , I am ready to plan the first class (in online teaching parlance - the trial session). What are the elements that I include in this session and why do I structure it this way? ~ o ~ x ~ o ~ I log on to the interface about 5 minutes before the child and upload an image like the one shown below on the first slide. I also check that my laptop and internet connection are working smoothly.