Skip to main content

Day 15 - A Transformational Failure

One of the biggest obstacle on the path of our vision is perseverance, the will to move ahead against the tides on a daily basis. It is difficult to be inspired at all times, not because we don't believe in it any more, but because failing consistently gets to us. The process becomes annoying and the purpose seems unachievable, more so in the event of failure on an elemental level.

After a brilliant day one, my vision seemed a lot more closer. Everybody had reached the objective for the day without any major issue. The kids were inspired, some transformed overnight (as mentioned by the parent) and some found their 'I can' attitude. I was not only ecstatic, but also looking forward to continuing the flow. Anything lesser than this achievement was unacceptable. It is not okay to come down by a notch for any reason. I have excellence issues, it must be achieved at all times, especially when it involves the future of so many kids, the present of the families and the notions of their extended families.

Pushing the children to want to do something, when they believe they can't is not a piece of cake. Subtlety goes a long way in bringing them on your side and then making them believe in themselves. Day two and I made a brilliant plan of dividing up the kids into homogeneous groups depending on where they stand with respect to academics. They were expected to inculcate team work and help each other and to a certain extent, it did work.

At the end of the day, all of them progressed but there was no sense of achievement. On day one, they were eager to learn more even at the cost of extending school time but today, they just seemed to want to get it over with. Though, they achieved, I failed at making their day at school count on multiple levels. I believe that students deserve to go back home everyday from school with a sense of awe, having learnt new and amazing things. That is what education should look like.

On the other end, misunderstandings and my own vocal stands almost cost me a close friend. Coupled with failure at school, it made me everything I didn't want to be. May be it was my words or even silence, because this is a world filled with interactions between everything and everyone. If what I say or don't say makes so much of a difference then I should mend my ways very soon, for giving my students the best and also making sure that I am not a burden on my friends. To that extent, I shall begin with a humble apology. Because every failure is an opportunity at making a bigger difference!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Systemic Transformation?

A system is a combination of a lot of all-s; all the people,  all ideas,  all their behaviours, all their inter-relationships, all their inter-dependencies, all processes and all boundary conditions. The number of permutations and/or combinations of these factors would amount to infinity. Furthermore, in a world as dynamic and inter dependent as it is today, these factors would also change and evolve ever so often. Think about any “system” - education, agriculture, health, transportation, infrastructure, etc. Every one of them would have all of these factors (maybe even more?) playing on them. So how does one transform a system? Is it possible at all? How can one firstly, grasp the entirety of a system? W ith all of these questions, I entered my office a couple of weeks ago in New Delhi. There was an eerie silence but that was probably because nobody wakes up at 7am on a cold winter morning and lands up at their offices. As I passed time catching up on the latest of Kof...
1 comment
Read more

The Great Help (Hope) lessness of our times

22 crore cases, 46 lakh deaths and rising. Orphans. Learning losses. Unemployment. Poverty. Hunger. Malnutrition. Depression. Inequality. Inequity. War. Hatred. Oppression. Discrimination. “A weird time in which we are alive. We can travel anywhere we want, even to other planets. And for what? To sit day after day, declining in morale and hope.” - Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle Seems like it has been years since I have felt some purposefulness to wake up or go to sleep at night. The ever unfolding, unending crises (plural) around and within makes me want to rather lie in bed, staring into the roof wishing I was deluded, sometimes, unalive. After over 45 days of forcing myself to live in a cocoon, for the first time in years, I feel emptied. My cup of life poured out lying in bed, sleepless for third night in a row, at 3AM. It started many years ago, what today some might call the “pre-covid era”, a sense of impending doom. A sense of there not being a future to look for...
3 comments
Read more

City 8 - The Puzzle

"Education is the greatest tool of a society" said Chanakya almost two millennia ago. Little did he realize that it will not hold true about two thousand years later. He did not take into account the shackles our society places on individuals and communities. Or may be he did and it is only I who is being cynical about it all. But how can I not be? I see children shaping their view of the world every single minute. My duty is to ensure they are able to make the right choices. I can sit any of my kids down and ask them about the various values they hold dear and how they can make sustainable changes in their class, family and society at large. They will give me answers that might very well put a saint to shame. We discuss equality of gender, religion, communities etc., to a large extent. They all articulate it well enough. But is it their perspective or is it their answer? I can never know. Living in extreme conditions, emotionally, physically and mentally, I believe...
Post a Comment
Read more