That OLD is NEW again

I heard the bell of Thorndike's Trail and Error success and B.F.Skinner's Reward and Punishment triumph in Psychology back in the college days. With them, I can fairly sketch Ivan Palov's Response and Stimuli and Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development feat. And not to forget that Swiss Psychologist Jean Piaget's robust and pungent theory of Constructivism.  

But that was six years ago. 

While six years is a pretty good time to attain teaching maturity, having just focused on my teaching subject in the school has left my psychological wing injured with missing feathers of understanding key concepts of psychology. 

Today, I virtually survived that brutal kick of complacency because I felt like I was "knowing the unknowing". The old wine that I drank six years ago seemed to give me a new taste in a new bottle. 

Thinking for that OLD in a NEW academy

I have never realized to hear the sound of, that once filled casket of my brain, dropping the academic gems on my journey to teaching. After travelling miles for the last six years, I am today totally awake, to explore many leaves of my learning wilted and drooped due to the severe drought of self-complacency and famine of self-ignorance.  

In retrospection,  realizing my stand as a teacher in front of the students, makes me feel the burning flames of embarrassment because I happened to be a king in a country of the blind. I was lucky I escaped unhurt from the bullets of children's query. 

And I wonder how stiff I was then wearing that ego tag to believe I know everything. 

When the pond frog is thrown into an ocean accidentally or deliberately, it knows how to calibrate its own specific heat capacity of the brainpower and perspicacity. 

So, learning, again and again, is never a mistake. 

To fairly advocate Lamarck's Law of Use and Disuse, I seriously felt that LEARNING should be another innate biological organ to be used at all times.  

"Education is what remains after one has forgotten what has learned in school" -Albert Einstein

The Flip Classroom

Perhaps the term might sound ancient to the already heard, yet it was all neoteric to me. 

The concept was brewed into our lesson during the presentation from the Guest Speaker Associate Professor Dr Chailerd Pichitpornchai. 

President of Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University, Dr Chailerd

Currently the President of Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University in Thailand, Professor Chailerd is a medical doctor by profession. 

Walking into the circle of the audience, "Sukhothai Thammathirat is the only open university in Thailand. Do you know the meaning of an OPEN? sternly asked the professor. 

The floor remained mute. But soon the clog of mutism was cleared when he answered himself. 

"Open means not closed". 

A huge torrent of laughter swept the class that even the moving hands of the clock were frozen for some time to let him begin.

"Open means to have an education of all sorts (including distance teaching and learning) systems with an open-door academic policy", he cleared. 

Albeit the fumes of a flip classroom talk sounded captivating, it evaporated with the introduction of his topics on E-Learning and Instructional Design. 

Having attained technological puberty, many schools in the world have shifted to flip teaching. 

This is a kind of teaching model where homework becomes classwork. The students learn new concepts and topics online by watching video lectures at home and attending the next class for discussion with their teachers. The teachers, instead of the usual lecture-based teaching, assume the perfect role of a guide and a facilitator through a series of interactions and discussions. In a gist, this kind of education portrays a perfect model of guided learning. 

But, I was made to think whether such kind of learning model would be reachable to the network of our Bhutanese Education System? If we claim of having proper internet connectivity throughout the kingdom, I bet, this sounds fairly a good deal to kick off. 

In the circle of academicians and scholars, prolonged debates have proven to have erupted with the lavas of advantages by following such a model of teaching, while demerits are also accompanied as well.

Children would get ample time to explore themselves at their own pace more privately and have unlimited fun in learning. Because they hold the remote to forward, pause or rewind the clip, again and again, the entire city of exploration is always conquerable. Further, the scholarly clips available on YouTube and Khan academy are the most powerful documents to assist such programs to sustain its life. 

Nonetheless, I feel our education system has miles to go and hard times to sweat to obtain this prescription of the flip classroom. With poor internet connectivity, it would still remain a question for some more time.

Should the hand of Zuckerberg's ambitious project of connecting 5 billion people reach Bhutan, the future is always promising. 

"He who never made a mistake, never made a discovery"- Samuel Smiles

Khan Academy

An insignia of Khan Academy

Founded by a Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate in September 2006, the Khan Academy is a non-profit educational site that hosts millions of free online video tutorials and micro-lectures. 

An educator whose father is from Bangladesh and mother from India, Salman Khan invests in this site thousands of materials with just a click away. 

This website encloses a huge volume of materials in a wide range of disciplines. The speciality of this site is that it has made unreachable reachable, complex simpler and unseen seen. This salient trait fits to suit his slogan, “A free world-class education for anyone anywhere” because the access door is open throughout.   

It is an educational one-stop-shop for educators, particularly the teachers.

If you feel like checking it out, see this link: https://www.khanacademy.org/

  "Ignorance is the curse of God; Knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven" - William Shakespeare

Nature Versus Nurture [Nativism Vs. Empiricism]

"Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take anyone at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select--doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief, and, yes, even beggar man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors. I am going beyond my facts and I admit it, but so have the advocates of the contrary and they have been doing it for many thousands of years"

The phrase that made an American psychologist John B. Watson well known for many centuries. His study in behaviourism has injected a lot of ideas in the field of psychology to accept the relationship between Nature and Nurture.     

He argued that even the heritable characteristics like that of skin colour, eyes, height, and hair [Nature] can be determined by the environmental or physical variables such as care, nature of home, oxygen and temperature [Nurture] during the process of onto-genesis [development]. That is, a mother who is dark and tall necessarily will not give birth to a dark and tall child. The environment has a crucial role to play in shaping the growth of the child.

This theory of Behaviorism was graciously put into an examination and proved that Nurture is just another hand of Nature to make a complete organism. 

Mr KC Jose, a lecturer in English at Samtse College of Education demands a standing ovation for having established the theory with abiding results.   

Our class, the B.Ed Secondary Science comprised of many potential candidates of their own calibre.

The study materials of an English Psychologist used to prove a scientific study: My class, 2007

I still remember many of them being remorseful and sharing the lumps of repentance for not being able to score a few marks in class XII, resulting in them being wingless to fly abroad. 

We were the most disgruntling and malcontent lot that existed for a few years. 

But things have changed in their colour as soon as Mr Jose warmed the seat of our class adviser. He was a genius that most of our class will never forget. A foreigner by status, his care was more than a family touch that even a tiny portion of its heat was sufficient to melt the young hearts. 

He remained as the tag of our pride. We sailed in his boat of intelligence and insights. And 'Jose' soon metamorphosed to a Trademark of our class in the market of education college. 

Within a span of time, he revived the weak muscles of our repentance, ironed the wrinkles of our undesirable etiquette and spread the wings of his pregnant hug and care uniformly throughout. 

Eventually, the continuity of his care and guidance was never in vain. The lyrics of his hope was composed of a beautiful song that we shall never forget. 

Today, as a matter of pride, sixteen out of the thirty-two disciples of Mr Jose completed Masters Degree in Science from abroad. 

Thanks to Mr Jose for those unwavering support and seeing the bright light in our dim future. 
And of all, for being a behaviourist of the 21st century to prove that Environment [Nurture] is as important as Nature itself.

The chicks that bloomed under the heat of Josean care