‘I let students quiz and challenge each other.’
Uma Bala of Orchids International School is a Social Studies teacher for Class XI and X. She is a research scholar and a teacher who can get even a hard nut involved in studies.
For how many years have you been teaching?
I have been teaching for 14 years and each day is new challenge.
What is the toughest thing about being in a classroom teaching?
Making reluctant students pay attention. It is especially challenging for me because social studies is a dry subject for many.
Do you think digital education is helping in the classroom?
The visuals make the subject interesting, so students enjoy learning. The multiple choice questions at the end of every lesson are useful. They get the students involved. It also lets me know if they really understood the lesson.
But does not that interfere with their imagination?
If I depend on the smart board completely then may become passive. I introduce a lesson by myself and also teach a portion of it before showing the digital slides. It’s very important to make the introduction of a lesson interesting in order to grab the attention of a student. Usually, when teaching a lesson in history or civics, I relate the concept to something that usually happens in daily life or something that happened in the recent past and was in the newspapers. I encourage students to keep in touch with news. I also use role-plays in class for history topics like French Revolution. If I quickly want to recap a lesson a smart board is very handy.
What do you think of CCE right now?
It makes students very creative. But all the assessment it’s a huge task for teachers. There are tests throughout the year (Smiles). Students enjoy quizzing in my subject. I choose a lesson in Economics. Then, divide the class into groups and give a segment of the lesson to each group to make a list of questions from this segment for the other group. But the whole class prepares for the entire lesson.
This way they study to challenge each other and enjoy the competition.
What do you think of the craze for professions like engineering and medicine among parents?
Andhra Pradesh is still badly hit by this craze. However, I have noticed that a child who is basically intelligent works hard and excels in every subject. I think students should, at the end of the day, choose the stream they really want to. But they can hear out their parents’ views also because they too do their share of research through their friends and social network.
Do you have an advice to students?
Don’t ignore social studies and languages. Everything adds to the overall score.
