Reel Life to Real Life – Lessons for teachers

Over the last many years, two movies of Bollywood that have been based on teacher and student relationship: Rough Book and Hitchki have hit me extremely hard. There have been many movies on the teacher-student relationship, but I would like to highlight something special from these two movies. There are two essential things that everybody should learn from them. The first lesson is “There are no bad students, only bad teachers” and the second lesson is “For every type of student there is a way to make them learn”.

Now let’s understand this point from the context of my global family managed business students. Every year, I come in close contact with more than 200 students from the global family managed business program. They come with diverse family backgrounds, which makes them vulnerable to the external world and they have normally been reared in a protective environment, due to which, they have been never stressed or pressurized to work hard, to obtain high grades etc. Rather they have been told that they have to clear their basic education and then get on the family business, which actually doesn’t require any qualification. Now, what I have mentioned in this paragraph doesn’t hold true in all cases, but still in the majority of them.

Now imagine a student who has never been pressurized for grades and has perhaps never worked hard, is made to sit in the class for the whole day, pushed for completing assignments and also has to be inspired for his or her family business.

This article tries to explore a differential way of dealing with the students.

Sometimes students come late to the class and some teachers enjoy a special pride in holding them and then firing (scolding) them for being late. The teachers by virtue of their status, feel that they are God-like and that they should be compulsorily respected and they should always be heard. Some teachers suffer from superiority ego and they tend to become complacent and so, they tend to start ruling over the student.

However, there are some other types of teachers, who react very differently. When a student comes late, they make them feel that they have done wrong by methods of self-realization. For instance, one teacher I know takes away the mobile phones of the students, makes them stand outside the class, but remains humble in giving punishment also. This teacher once told me that our duty is to teach discipline and not make them rogues who would further make some more rogues.

Many times, I come across such situations, and I approach by standing quietly and seeing them through their eyes. In less than one minute they have realized what wrong they have done.

There is one teacher, who I know, is a great teacher. To cite an example, food and drinks are not allowed in the class, so one teacher stands like a wall at the classroom door to make sure that none takes food items inside the class. When this teacher had to take a class he shared stories with them, that why food and drinks should not be taken into the class. He said that because the food particles that are fallen, it leads to the spoiling of the carpet and also smells bad and then leads to rising of moths. However, some students still were averse to learning, so one fine day he asked the students to clean the class. Then he made them do a simple calculation of the teaching time, after which the students understood the time they had lost since they had got food and drinks. A loss of time is a loss to them.

As teachers our job is to create great people who would own and run organizations, if we create rogue people then the world is going to be like that – think about it… Every child has immense potential; the teachers just have to make sure that they harness the potential.