Job Title: Assistant Professor
College Name: SCMS School Of Engineering & Technology.
Dear Mission10Xians,
Welcome to Let’s Share - a window to showcase the experiences of Mission10Xians
In this edition we have a transcript of a fellow Mission10Xian’s address in the Educators Meet in Kochi. Prof. KC Mathew from SCMS Group of Institutions tells us about his transition from “an orthodox teacher “to “an empowered teacher”.
He started with a quote “Confucius once said that somebody hears something and be sure he will forget it, let him see something, he may remember that, but you make him experience or make him get involved with it and definitely he will remember that till his death.”
From here he retraced his steps to his days as an engineering student. “Now when I stand over here I wish to take myself back to the stages when I was a student in engineering college. I was always a passive listener writing down some of the lecture notes and fully getting confused. When I would reach home I would try to recollect what the teacher was saying but could only recollect a few things. That defect was always there till the end of education.”
He then pointed out to the disconnect he had during his days as a learner. The same disconnect was present during his 42 years of teaching too, the only difference was that the roles were reversed - “I became a teacher and I had some students who were just like me. I was honest and dedicated; I wanted the student to understand what I was saying. The way in which I was giving them the lesson was to my own satisfaction but not their satisfaction this I came to know only when I conducted the first test paper. But by the time evaluation of the first test paper was over I found that miserably many of them have performed very poor.”
Prof. Mathew incorporated various pedagogic methods in his classroom sessions and shared a few with his listeners –
1. “Whenever there is an apt portion we have a role play. Also every day we call out names of one of the students and ask him or her to come to the stage and recap what was taught the previous day. It is a regular affair in our class and this is done with no prior announcement. It is at random that the selection is done. So everybody comes prepared with previous day’s portion.”
2. “Another method by which we make the students come to know about what was taught in the class is by innovative quizzes. The class is divided into two not as boys and girls from set one, one person will stand up and ask a question on the previous days class to the set two from where he will call out the name and ask that person to answer if he answers he gets a chance to ask another question, the question is forwarded to the first set and it goes on if somebody loses the answer or makes a mistake in answering they lose one point. Finally a packet of chocolate or is given.”
3. “Another method is slips are given in one set of slips it will be the answers it is going to be the questions the person who gets the answer will make the answer and a person who has the question related to that will make the question. There may be very similar questions and answers and they have to be very definite about it. Teacher has to work on it. The previous night or day before that he must be planning for it in making a very correct method of evaluation.”
4. “Another method is just the reverse, the question is given and the answer is to be read out by the correct person. To mention a few these are few things that are done in our institution.”
These new activities got Prof. Mathew a few complaints from his students which he excitingly shared - “The complaint was that few teachers are only using this method we want everyone to teach or use these methodologies.” “Sir when you were in our class you were giving all lectures and now the seventh batch students say that it is very interesting and they love the class we are just missing all those things.”
Veerendra the Academic Relationship Manager for Kerala sums up his observations on Dr. Mathew’s efforts.
Prof. Mathew epitomizes the philosophy of Mission10X because he honestly believes that:
• Age is just a number!
• Learning never stops – for the teacher and the student!
• Every window of learning opportunity should be grabbed with both hands!
• Students are very hungry. And the teacher should be hungrier…for knowledge!
• Adolescent learners always look up to role-models and he always strives to be one!
• Change is just a state of mind!