What makes a teacher great?
When my kid turned 2, I slowly started looking around for a space where we could leave her for a few hours every day. We considered the franchises. We thought of the stand-alone mom-and-pop places. If the school was nice, the facilities were not up to par, if the facilities were nice, then the student-teacher ratio was found lacking. There was always something wrong and I found it difficult to focus and finalize on a space that would encourage her to be the way she was. Talkative. Curious. And unapologetic. Eventually, we stumbled into this exclusive preschool that was located very close to our house and boasted of the Playway teaching method. The school had a good mix of children from different backgrounds and a very healthy 1:5 teacher-student ratio. The interesting thing in this school was the fact that the teachers were local, but qualified to guide and mentor little kids. And I choose these terms carefully.
I had started with the research on the kind of school I wanted my child to be studying in based on the kind of schools my classmates had graduated from. But these were high-schools, not preschools and I slowly discovered that there was a world of difference between high schools and preschools and what they offered. I did not want a school that was too strict and particular about what they wanted their students to achieve. I had seen a few of those schools as well, where the focus was on children learning finger dexterity, and the students were expected to color within the lines, make perfectly straight lines, slanting lines, and curved lines, and be mini-adults. To be honest, I had not thought much about schools until I saw how she interacted with my mother, and Mum was a great teacher. She was patient, kind, empathetic, and understanding and most importantly she encouraged children to talk. Encouraging children to talk, is the final feather a great teacher grows on her wings, under which children thrive and grow. This is the kind of environment I wanted for my child. I wanted a home away from home or a second home a safe space where she was encouraged to be whatever she chose to be that day.
You see, my daughter was 2 ½ years old, and while I wanted her to go to school, I wanted to be her primary teacher and guardian. And moms all over the world know that this is a losing battle. You can either be the Mum or you can be the teacher, especially if you choose one of the traditional curriculums. I had almost given up on identifying a good first step for her to explore her world because that is how I viewed the preschool. It would be her initial step into the unknown and the unfamiliar and it had to be a space where she would be allowed to explore at her speed. So, when I shortlisted the school I was happy to have found a space she would be comfortable in. We enrolled her and she started school. I expected the first day of wailing, so I took a bottle of water and a mat to sit outside the school. But, she just dropped my hand and walked into the school with a, “See you later Mum”. There amongst the wailing children was my kid, standing, listening with rapt attention, and happy to be away from me. She was excited to be in this new environment. Occasionally throughout the day, she would go to one of the wailing kids, whisper something to them, and then take them into the class. This happened over the week and she was the most popular kid in her class. Most of the kids who used to stand outside and wail would wait for her to come and walk in with her happy to join the fun.
I still remember her first Parent Teacher Interaction, where the teacher asked me if she had been prepared to come to school or if we had told her that she had to behave a particular way in school. They were quite impressed with her confidence and interest in participating in school and class activities. The meeting lasted for a full 30 minutes and the teachers eventually mentioned that while my child had helped them get some semblance of order in the class, she was also the only student in the class who would walk out of the class if she got bored with what was being taught in the class. Very often they would have to go to the play area and coax her out of the tunnels with an activity she was interested in participating in. Until this time it seemed like my child was part of just another school, but when I realized that she had to be coaxed out of her play to participate in something else, is when I realized that the teachers were interested in her feedback and were striving to ensure that all the students in their class were satisfied and participating in the events they organized.
This was the ideal school and this was the kind of teacher I was looking for to guide and mentor my child in her initial years. My child studied in this school for the first two years and loved going to school every day and all it took was one great teacher in that first year that made it so easy for her.
Just a little more 