A lesson from my teacher and a lessons from my students

I had the previlage of doing two courses for my masters, under the former Vice-Chancellor of my university- Dr.V.Ganeshan. I was known for bunking classes in college, but his was one of the few I hardly missed. If I remember correctly, I did a paper on teaching public speaking skills and another basic one on Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing. What I loved most about his lectures, were that they weren't lectures but more like anecdotes from his experiences as an educator. I value the lessons learnt here far higher than those from my "Theories of Language Acquisition" or "Promoting Learner Autonomy in the Classroom" classes, because his lessons were life lessons. Today, I received an email from him, where he signed off with this.

As a teacher, I do believe in these words of Forest Witcraft (slightly modified by me!):

"Twenty years from now It won't matter

What kind of car I drove

What kind of house I lived in

How much money I had in the bank

Nor what my cloths looked like

BUT

The world may be a little better

Because, I was important

In the life of a student

Who was willing to learn from me

and

Whom I had the privilege to teach."

Dr.Ganeshan, you have played an important part in my life and I hope I can pass on the good deed to my students!

While on the topic of learning and teaching, here are two lessons I learnt today.

1. Apart from teaching English Language, I also do "content support" where I sometimes 'pre-teach' science/math/S.studies vocabulary to my ESL students. Today, my 4th grade intermediate ESL students were asked to write down some facts they know about electricity - their next science unit.

Here's what one boy wrote :- Elektreecity is a sorce (source)of energe (energy) and it sticks to matle (metal) and water. So, becos a purson will be 70%water and the rest off the body are flash(flesh), mussal (muscle), blood and knowledge, pursons can get shoked (shocked= electrocuted) and be died if elektreecity sticks to them.

Think about it... can you actually separate what you know - your knowledge - from the rest of your body??

2. My kids are just back to school after their Fall break. (yeah... Fall break here in India!!!) Most of them went out of the country for the week. So this morning,during circle time, we were sharing our holiday stories. It was cute lil JH's turn (I know, I shouldn't have favourites, but he's such a cutie!) and this is what he said :-

" First my Mommy said we'll go to Japan for the holiday. But we got late and in Airport we got late again for writing name on some papers so the airplane went off to Japan and didn't take us. But thats ok, because we went to a place that's so much...much much...hundred times better than Japan. We went to Fisherman's Cove for 1 day (a beach resort here)and I saw a shouting star. (shooting star) - a double shouting star and ships in the sea in the night."

Seriously?? A one day trip to the beach is a hundred times better than a trip to Japan?? Aaah! If only I could make such tasty lemonade like that when life throws me lemons!!