The two most important persons in our life are the family doctor and the school teacher. Now if you have been a teacher for a long time you’ll rather not agree to it. How many of our students we taught and left have expressed their gratitude to us for changing their life, or making them understand their parents better, persisted with their aspirations, even changed their handwriting, leave alone influencing them in selecting their careers. Did you make a difference?? – If you have, then you are lucky, so go on.

When I said make a difference I meant make an impact on children positively. Not merely to be toppers and famous personalities but made them real men, honest, sincere and God-fearing. If at all we teachers can leave behind something then leave a mark, not merely a stain.

Today, in the 21st century nobody is hired solely because of his grades and percentage but their skills and perceived ability to learn – develop and contribute. It is therefore, necessary for teachers to equip students with skills beyond their text books. It isn’t enough to teach English Grammar without proper pronunciations, literacy, appreciation and a good vocabulary.

The Govt. has prescribed books for all subjects. Some are mediocre, some satisfactory. The primary level as per the State Govt. syllabus is much behind the CBSE and Cambridge schools. To eliminate this, school like ours, have prescribed additional books for our children. Despite the objections by the department, we continue to use these books for the betterment of our children. Students are therefore faced with a little extra burden. On one side we need to develop self esteem, empathy and inter-personal skills and on the other hand, we have to teach them the importance of creative and critical thinking, to develop the problem solving and decision making skills.  Teaching self-awareness helps children to acknowledge their strength and weakness’ – the first step towards building a good personality and character.

We, at Reubs, try to avoid temptations to mould students in our form. Our job is to equip, enable, and empower them. And for this we require a free hand.

Not all note books can be thoroughly checked. A teacher has four subjects to teach in four classes. That would be 200 books to be corrected every week. Something not possible. Therefore we try to check the books to see if they have completed the work or not but try and do our best to correct each composition book thoroughly. Not all children are clever in completing their books. This leaves the teacher with no time for extra work – tests – objectives but merely correction of books, books and books. If children can copy correctly and they should be if they have been taught well – teachers would have less problems and this would increase their output.

With additional text books, however good they may be – if children are not trained to write and express their thought in little matters the entire theory fails.

Parents must also work hard in making children write answers and copy from their text books. In fact children should be asked to refer to their dictionaries after Std. II. Let’s make our students independent. Merely doing what teacher has given is not enough. The child must answer and write any question based on the text taught. That would be real education. Getting distinction by working on the assignments and teacher’s written notes is not enough. A Child should be able to face any question with confidence. That would make him independent.

Guess what you parents want. The ball is in your court. We, at Reubs are ready and willing to work accordingly.

Thanking you.

Yours in the field of education,

H. I. Reubens
P.R.O, Reubs P.T.A
Ahmedabad.