So, I got some time and I am happy: For past 5 - 6 months I was wondering how to share the happiness/excitement/opportunities of Bio-Research with the students I teach. My belief is: We Indians are sufficiently Intelligent to understand the Complexity of Biology. The major problem across the country is: What we lack is the ability to interpret/decipher/understand the Scientific English in the Journals / Text books and Research Articles and Write Scientific English. English is NOT our Native Language so obviously we cannot write and read as good as Natives. I thought I will do an experiment: Had to teach Computational Genomics. After some PUBMED Free Article Searching - Ended up in a PNAS, 1993 review on Human Genome Project. I explained the students the problem, my solution and the risk involved in this experiment. Gave them the indications that Initially it will be difficult but later it will be a Big Jump and a Long term solution. They accepted and became part of the team to experiment. The Protocol decided was: All the students with me are one team and will try to understand the paper and the author - what he was trying to convey in the paper. All the students will have to read one or two paragraphs from the article LOUDLY, try to understand and try to Explain the Meaning to the rest of the class. I was adding some value based on my experience of subject and the philosophical aspects of the content. I was correcting the pronunciations. Suggesting how to give pauses while reading, where to give pauses - talked about how a comma (,) killed a man stories etc. I tried to avoid the TIME Pressure on these students. Tried to keep only the English and Science Pressure. Today evening we completed the 5 or 7 pages successfully. I was able to see a glow of confidence among 75% of the students. I felt now these students have over come the FEAR of READING scientific articles and or text books. We all learned together. I learnt alot of science sitting along with them. We together created the Question Bank for upcoming Monthly Exam. Not to forget - We had lot of fun - Scientific, Social fun. The students didnt observe, but my eyes got wet in ecstatic feeling of happiness when I saw the glow in their faces. This is some thing to be remembered for this life where ever I am, hence documented this. How to explain all this in one sentence: I was surprised and realized what how much emotional MODI felt while entering the Parliament and how truly he felt about the PUNCH LINES he used to use in his Speeches: The Bottom line of this experiment: Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas. With all Students, Progress to all. All the class mates including me as one the students learnt. Wow !! I was not getting time to take classes. So I put a proposal if they can come at 8.15AM - with a negative anticipation. To my Surprise, they said they will. That Enthusiasm gave me the necessary energy to get up early and come to office early. Successfully took classes. Every class had some thing funny/interesting/serious/complicated to remember mapped to some scientific topic. We realized : In Yeast - primitive eukaryotic systems also followed Indian Traditional Arranged Marriage System in Their Mating Procedures. These are STUDENTs - those who are studious, dil maange more Knowledge. When I didnt know / understand some thing in the article, I used to accept with all sincerity. So my lacking in knowledge never became a hurdle to our learning / studying together. Many times it so happens that Students feel that if teacher doesnt know every thing, they should not be respected or cared about etc. Though by principle this is true, this attitude is NOT valid for a field like biology which is at infancy where we cannot expect lot of knowledge with Teacher. Through this experiment - for once we went beyond ego and enjoyed the happiness of pure scientific thinking/understanding/studying. Love to all students. Enjoy Life, Be Happy. Prasad.
Posted on: Sat, 19 Jul 2014 14:22:13 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015