In a world where we are constantly judged by others, it is nice to have someone who will just LISTEN & UNDERSTAND!! When I started working as a counselor 11 years ago, I was in the initial learning phase of how to deal with students of varied age groups.
I wonder where did the inspiration come at that time to take this challenging role???
I remember initially I got it from the things I had read- PSYCHOLOGY BOOKS, self-help books, online articles, magazines, and whatnot. I liked to spend time contemplating, understanding and critiquing what I had read. Even though I looked at their age, my students at the end of the counseling experience grew so much in learning coping skills, appropriate social interactions and self-regulation.
Now after working with them for more than 11 years, what is the inspiration? Now there is one more source: MY STUDENTS (CLIENTS).
Apart from what I have been reading regularly, now it’s more about my students. The people I see often ask me questions from different spheres of life. To begin with, I will explain something from my reading knowledge. And then gradually some of these sessions turn into NEW INSIGHTS for me. The insights which help me in growing both personally and professionally. And for me, this next source is absolutely the MASTER KEY for unlocking their inner potential.
Last but not least, the inspiration comes from That FEELING…the feeling that counselors get when they have helped others in positive ways, is everlasting, empowering and rewarding.
~ Swati Garg
I am a Pre-primary teacher working with a renowned school in my vicinity. I have been working at this level for almost two decades now. I am not a blogger and neither do I look forward to becoming one. I work in a competitive world with distinguished and illustrious educationists all around me. They are well-versed people with a command on their subjects. I am not intending to challenge any authority. I just want a platform to share my classroom experiences. I came to this profession accidentally but slowly and gradually I started enjoying every aspect of my professional life and within no time it became a passion.
Every year as the new session starts the little kids enter the school premises with a very confused and curious look. The colorful classrooms with several educational toys and scribbling boards help them to settle faster. Some enjoy the first day of the school while a few of them look desperate to meet their mothers. That’s the time when I step in and make them comfortable. As time passes by they start settling into their day to day routine. Initially, their little fingers can just hold colors. They love scribbling but as they adjust their capacity to do work also increases. As the session culminates I send my little toddlers who are now set for a new journey to a higher grade and again I get ready to welcome a new set of students.
~ Neeru Sarin
Mind your language
A teacher has to be a learner throughout her life if she wants to be an effective teacher. All teachers especially a language teacher should be ready to acknowledge that she doesn’t know all the words under the sun. More and more words are getting added and many words are becoming obsolete. The only way to keep in touch with the dynamics of the language is to keep reading. It is easy to assume that we know the contextual meaning but if researched you will sometimes be surprised to know that the actual meanings are different from our assumptions. My advice is if it is a new word or a word you have recently come across, it would be better to look it up for meaning as well as pronunciation. I would like to give some examples of words that are misused and those that do not exist. Let me give you an example of the oft-used word ‘prepone’. Many of you would be surprised to know that the word does not exist. It is not the opposite of the word postpone. Let me explain. In the word postpone, the post is not a prefix. There is no word pone to attach a prefix to, so you cannot remove the post and add pre to it to give the antonym. Oxford dictionary recognized the wide usage of the word and has included it in the 8th edition of the oxford dictionary but for a purist, the word is still a ‘no’ as it is only used in the Indian sub-continent. So what can be used instead of prepone? You can use ‘advanced’ or ‘re-scheduled’. Let me explain a widely misused word ‘enormity’. You, I am sure, would easily jump to the conclusion that the word enormity is the noun form of enormous. But you would be surprised to know that it is no way related to the word enormous. Enormous means huge whereas enormity means extreme evil. The noun form of enormous is enormousness. We can use these words in sentences such as Example 1: She was bewildered by the enormousness of the task.
Example 2: the enormity of the crime shocked even the police. Sometimes even the government publications overlook this kind of ‘faux pas’. In the chapter ‘Reach for the top’ class IX of NCERT, the word enormity is used instead of the word enormousness.
Extract from the text Chapter 8: Reach for the top -Part 1 (Santosh Yadav) Describing her feelings when she was literally ‘on top of the world’, Santosh has said, “It took some time for the enormity of the moment to sink in… Then I unfurled the Indian tricolour and held it aloft on the roof of the world. The feeling is indescribable.
Now that the meaning of the word ‘enormity’ is clear, wouldn’t it be ridiculous to use it in the above context?
~ Lakshmi Srinivasan
