March 2013 Volume 7, Issue 3

Inspiring Teachers
Driving educational change through excellence in teaching

Picking up the threads

After the major setback with Shankars leaving us suddenly, I have started the and resuming the workshops. With the new members, we of training. Specifically, a new the Heart is being offered. We will do this at several levels starting with the physical/material/career aspects and dealing with spiritual aspects in advanced workshops. If someone asks me to name only two skills required to improve oneself I would say introspection and reading. Of course, reading can be replaced with any other form of learning (watching a video, listening to a lecture We will be developing these skills in our participants in I have met Dr Hemalatha more than a year ago. She is very dynamic and she took me to a couple of temples explaining me their history. She has been a source of knowledge and support for several kids on the NIT campus and instrumental in their success. In this months chat with Dr Ramakalyan, she shares some thoughts on her interesting life. Uma Garimella Incidentally, Dr Ramakalyan and Madhankumar Srinivasan (an ex-faculty, now in Infosys) are two people who have lot more faith in Teachers Academy than even I have, and are a source of support and motivation during low times. Thanks! I have also shared some thoughts after observing some 20 faculty in their classes. Our interesting links are back read on!

process of rebuilding the team etc). This month:

Explaining is good, but not enough Uma Garimella...2 Prof Hemalatha Thiagarajan, NIT Trichy, FOM3 Interesting links 4 Caption contest 4

are also introducing new areas our future endeavours. workshop called Leading from when I visited NIT, Trichy

Some updates..
A trip to Bhalki for a faculty session at BKIT (formerly Rural engineering College, Bhalki) on 23rd Feb, 2013 Non-pedagogy workshop, Leading from the Heart, for faculty at CBIT, Hyderabad, 12-13 April 2013 Sessions on Research Methodology, Technology for Teaching, IT for administrators sessions at JNTU-Academic Staff College, NMREC, Hyderabad

Explaining is good, but not enough!

Inspiring Teachers
each and every program on the board. Did you ever execute them? Not really. And did she ask you tricky questions? No. Given that the lady was a Gold Medalist meant she wasnt dumb. But mere explaining concepts and making students understand doesnt automatically give them thinking skills. For example, even in the simple case above, a sorting algorithm needs to be stopped after finding the biggest number instead of proceeding to sort the entire array. When I observe classes, I noticed the same thing. There are bad teachers who are not able to even explain, but the better lot are only explaining well. Most often they are working a couple of simple examples to illustrate a concept or meticulously going through a derivation. I accept that this is required as a foundation for thinking further. I also understand that several students will appreciate this effort because they find it hard to understand. But my question is about those who are capable of higher order thinking like analysis and synthesis what do we have for them in these classes? And if we are assuming that those students will automatically be able to do tricky thinking by themselves, we are proved wrong by the example of our Gold Medalist. Exactly this point has been raised even by our FOM this month, Dr Hemalatha. It is necessary to expose students to problem solving, diagnostic thinking, extending a given line of thought etc. Just as it is our duty to reach the student who is finding it difficult to understand, it is equally important to have something challenging for the bright and the brilliant and not lose them to the flaws of the system where earning a Gold Medal is not related to your thinking skills. Leaving the philosophy aside, promoting thinking in class is not difficult. And it can be done alongside the basic things

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that need to be done for other students. This is called differentiated teaching and I have probably written about this before. If not, you can Google it. Questions like why a particular step is required in a program or what happens when a statement is deleted or how to modify a given program to do something else, or how to find errors in logic can be posed to students in class. Parallels can be drawn in almost every other subject or discipline. The pre-requisite for this is the facultys expertise in the subject and the ability to facilitate a discussion with an open mind. In such scenarios, there are always multiple solutions and the students may have a better answer than the faculty could think of. Hence the need for an open mind and humility. Students will always appreciate a teacher who facilitates an intelligent discussion and accepts a mistake. But it will be a bad show if the basic facts or competence is lacking in the teacher. Uma Garimella

A couple of years ago, a lady approached me for some help. She was an MSc (Computer Science) Gold Medalist from the OU College of Science and wanted to teach. She wanted my help in giving a demo class. It turned out C programming was her favourite. In the course of our discussion, I asked her to write down the algorithm to find the biggest of three numbers. She quickly wrote it. Then I asked her to extend it to 5 numbers or ten numbers. She found it hard. Then I asked her if she could tweak one of the sorting algorithms to get this biggest number. She had to scratch her head. When I asked her why C Programming was her favorite, she said her teacher was excellent. And why was she excellent? She explained e

Page 3 of 5 Faculty of the month -

Inspiring Teachers
Prof hemalatha THIAGARAJAN
University and joined the Ph.D. Program there, but got married within 6 months of joining and again a break! When I moved to Chennai after four years at Mumbai I worked for three years as a lecturer in Arts and Science College. During this time I decided to do look for avenues for further studies and did PG Dip in SQC & OR from ISI Chennai Chapter where I was exposed to modern topics like Operations Research, Statistical Quality Control, Programming. I also attended summer schools with a view of looking out for Ph.D. opportunities. Though I did not complete the Diploma course (I missed the fourth semester exam due to a minor operation) it helped me decide to work in Operations Research for my Ph.D at U.T. Austin. Yes, some of the decisions that I made, like going abroad leaving my husband and son(8 years-in fourth grade) were not widely accepted on my in laws side but my husband stood by me and helped me through, by taking responsibility of my Teaching Math to Engineering students is a tough job because they think they dont need it. It is a thankless job as all your sincere efforts are wasted. But there is joy in teaching school kids as the kids who come for my classes are enthusiastic. It was a lot of fun teaching them during the nineties. But now, even school kids know that with minimum effort they can enter Engg College and their future is made. Having said that, I will continue teaching High School kids even after my retirement as I hope that somewhere somebody will benefit.

time getting adjusted to school rigour as I was always taught by my grandfather and I had poor Knowledge of Tamil as my grandfather did not focus much on it. The problems did not end here. I had a break and had a two month stint in eighth grade which I passed and moved to a third school for You began your life in a very ordinary way, a small school, then BSc, etc.etc., got married, went to Univ. of Texas at Austin to do a PhD amidst many things not accessible to a typical South Indian woman. Can you share with us some of your excitement in this journey? My education started at the age of six when my grandfather, who was a Math and English teacher, took over the academic side, from the small single teacher Telugu medium village school that I was on and off going to. Within two years he imparted the necessary skill and knowledge for me to get admitted to, what is seventh grade, in todays school curriculum. I had a tough ninth. During this period my grandfather toyed with the idea of making me take Benares Matric so that I need not worry about schooling. I did Math and Science for Benares Matric, then Andhra Matric the next year along with my elder sister, which was vetoed down by my dad saying, what will she do for three years till she completes 15 when she will become eligible for college? I finally passed my SSLC from Lalgudi Girls High School, Trichy Dist. This journey through four schools in five years was difficult but exciting as my grandfather was there at hand to help me. As Math was my forte I did B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Mathematics from Seethalakshmi Ramaswami College, Trichy. I went on to do M.Phil. from Madurai Kamaraj

Inspiring Teachers
Interesting Links
Articles on education

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http://www.startribune.com/nation/192359261.html?refer=y http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/03/04/international-educatorsconsider-challenges-integrating-students-abroad http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/02/13/australia-adapts-europeanunion-tool-comparing-universities For women http://www.wiseindia.org/ http://www.ias.ac.in/womeninscience/ http://wowfactor.asia/

Captions Lalitha Karthik: Have I been time traveling?!? Sunita Shukla: Cyber vibes of the times!

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Teachers Academy
Hyderabad PHONE: 97011 41118 E-MAIL: info@inspiring-teachers.com

Inspiring Teachers
AR: At what point of time

Dr Hemalatha Thiagarajan
Contd from page 3
approach AR: You are voracious reader and you have an enviable collection of math books; any recommendation to the readers from your recent reading? My recommendation will be for books by Raymond Smullyan on logic. He has a great collection on logic puzzles. My student (who is also a great fan of Smullyan!) tells me that there is short film on him which I did not have an opportunity to watch. There are a lot of problem solving books published in India as well as outside that I use for my students. If you google under Math Olympiads you will get a huge list.

started its INMO program

did you think of becoming and along with my son I a teacher? In particular, I started teaching problem know your passion for mathematics education. I see a lot of contentment to enthusiastic school solving to few interested students. My son made it in INMO and four of his juniors camp. They had the

whenever you teach math also went on to IMO training going kids; you don't mind opportunity of doing Math whether the mercury is at for four summers during its peak, or it rains cats and dogs. What goes in your mind? My decision to teach was not a conscious one. I always liked teaching friends in school, college, wherever. But the conscious choice was when I was asked by Prof. M.
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their undergraduate studies with reputed institutes like ISI, IMSc, TIFR etc. Now a lot of good institutes offer B.Sc. Hons Math courses but I create awareness among students that these courses are prestigious and better than IITs. This is the satisfaction I get by teaching High School kids. AR: Do you have contacts with your peers in Have you studied their

Venkatraman, Head, School of Mathematics, Madurai Kamaraj University to teach Differentiable manifolds my juniors. He was very

course to M.Phil. students, i.e., advanced countries?

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confident of my ability to teach models? Are you inspired AR: You appear quite tranquil; whats the and insisted that I take over by them to adopt in your secret of your even though I was a first year capacity? confidence? Where do you get your energy research scholar. But that was No I do not. But I have access from? the seed for my future decision to their method of teaching Tranquil! Me! No! I am the to take up teaching. When we through the net. With Math a very opposite! I get disturbed walked down from the personalized touch is by a lot of things. That said I department, Prof. required. I do try to dont think I have done more Venkatraman used to discuss approach each batch of than my fair share. I don't group structure in the fencing students that I deal with claim that that I do much around the university campus differently. In my teaching, I more than others but maybe and anything around he used have used OCW MIT differently. My confidence lies to connect it with Topology. extensively for Computer in the fact that I am honest in When I returned from US I Science courses but for Math what I am doing. learnt that India had just I believe a personalized