The prologue of a million dollar teacher

Posted on 29 May 2010 03:34am in Education, Inspiration, Empowerment

I am often called by schools to interview teachers for them. It’s not an easy job because schools are not just looking for someone who knows the subject and who can teach. They want an educator, psychologist, paramedic, public speaker, motivator, career counselor, youth advisor, child specialist and what not, all rolled into one, called a teacher.

“You can't find a teacher like that, someone with all those qualities,” you may say. “It’s impossible.”

But I know it’s possible. If you are a teacher you should know. You are one such person already. You’re teaching your subject, watching for learning problems, dealing with all kinds of parents, helping your students with pertinent issues like peer pressure and bullying, building their self-esteem, providing opportunities for decision-making, guiding them through critical life choices… you’re doing everything! It’s all a part of the package of being a teacher.
That’s why everybody can't be a teacher. It’s the special few who can and who choose to teach. For the rest of them, there are other professions.

My job at the interview is to identify and take in those special few with the guts to teach. I’m glad that I always find them, and I am gladder that their number is ever increasing. More and more of these (special breed of) individuals are joining the profession, and helping to transform the very nature of teaching and learning.

Teachers around the world are bringing in a new evolution in education. I can see the change happening before my eyes.

I could see the same vision of change in the eyes of the young man seated in front of me at the last interview. I didn’t much look into the folder of credentials he had submitted; I could see in his eyes a reflection of the passion of his heart. His words too echoed that same passion. He was raring to teach.

I wanted to hire him, but I couldn’t tell him so immediately. I was apprehensive about the pay. The school was offering a handsome pay, no doubt, but this gentleman was worth a lot more than that. I even had a wicked thought momentarily that this gentleman should have applied for some other profession where he would be far better off financially. But then, he wanted to be a teacher and the school was in need of one like him. I told him he was hired and what his salary would be.

He happily accepted the offer and I heaved a sigh of relief. Then I asked him, “What can the school expect of you?”

He replied:

“You can expect me to teach as if I were paid a million dollars. How can I teach anything less than that?”

Indeed, how could he! How could he teach anything less than his very best! I almost stood up to give an ovation to this remarkable person who was going to be a teacher.

He reminded me of my own teacher from school - a million dollar teacher. You will hear a lot about him in this book. The title itself is in honor of him.

This new teacher (his name was David) sounded equally worthy and had all the trappings of a great teacher.

I visited him in the school a few months after this interview to see how he was doing. I was truly amazed by his performance. He had an almost uncanny ability to take a class of ordinary kids and turn them into geniuses and champions, no less. He was indeed a great teacher.

We'll see more of him in the first chapter:

a true alchemist


I hired four teachers that day. The second was Fatima, a middle-aged woman with 20 years of experience with her.

I was impressed by the range of knowledge and skills she had. I could tell that she was an avid reader who had read almost every book that a teacher should read. (I have listed some of these books on page 140.)

“You’re hired,” I told her, “Ms... .” I faltered. I just couldn’t recall her name, and looked blankly at her.

“I’m Fatima,” she quickly said. Then she did an amazing thing – something that doesn’t usually happen at an interview. She taught me an easy way to remember names. Then she ran me through some interesting memory methods such as visual linking and number-rhyme system. In less than 40 minutes, she had given me one of the most impressive lessons in effective learning that I’ve remembered and applied ever since.

You’ll read about her methods in chapter two:

a wizard in the classroom


The third teacher that I was privileged to appoint that day was Arun, who looked and talked like Gandhi, and incidentally, he was born the day Gandhi was shot dead. Yes, he was more than 60, but he was as active as a 16-year-old boy and had the keenness of a six-year-old kid.

As he was telling me how he would like to foster creativity in students, I couldn’t help remembering my million dollar teacher. He always taught us to use our imagination and creativity and had us learn by exploring, experimenting and discovering things for ourselves. I began to wonder how we could make our classrooms more like his. We studied in bamboo and straw shanties back then, sitting on the floor, but our classrooms were laboratories of exploration and discovery.

I suddenly realized that Arun had stopped talking and was looking at me interestedly with a knowing smile on his face.

“Please continue, sir, I’m listening,” I said.

“Well, you haven’t been listening really,” he told me nonchalantly. “You remembered something or someone from the past, and then you started talking to yourself. I was waiting for you to finish with that.”

I was shocked. How did he know what I was thinking?

“Eyes,” he told me. “Words can lie but eyes will always tell the truth. I was looking at the movement of your eyes and I could tell what was going on in your mind.”

Good heavens! How handy that would be to catch your students with their occasional little lies and lame excuses!

“That’s a great feat,” I complimented him. “I wish I knew how to do the same.”

“Oh, it’s a simple little trick that I can teach you in five minutes,” he replied.

I’ll be sharing quite a bit of Arun’s wonderful strategies in the chapter titled:

a master communicator


Mei was next. It was an intriguing interview with her.

Mei asked me more questions about the school and how sincere we were about really preparing the students for their future than I ever got the chance to ask her about herself. When I finally showed my interest in hiring her, she told me something that no interviewer may have ever heard from an interviewee.

“Oh, you can't hire me,” she said tersely.

“What do you mean?” I asked, most surprised. She was here for a job and what did she mean that I couldn’t hire her!

“Let me teach for a week for free’” she said. “I must practically prove how valuable I could be for the school. Then you can decide whether to continue my services for a charge.”

I really liked her idea. “That’s all right,” I said. “We’ll watch you for a week and then hire you if we are satisfied.”

“No,” she retorted. “If you decide to take my services, then in fact I’d be hiring you to pay me.”

Then she explained it to me more clearly. She thought of herself as a teacher and not as an employee. An employee could be hired and fired, but a teacher always remained a teacher.

Mei liked to believe that as a teacher she cold always learn, improve and upgrade herself and offer her services for better charges. She didn’t want to be an employee who was stuck in one place and got paid a certain amount whether one improved or not.

I couldn’t agree with her more.

Just as she proposed, Mei taught for free for a week. In that time, she won the hearts of the students and the trust of the administrators. She proved herself so valuable that the school couldn’t afford not to hire her. Or, in her words, she hired the school to take her services!

She remained with the school just for a year. But in that one year she gave the school what it hadn’t got in 10 years. She established a unique culture in the school and left behind a lasting legacy. You’ll get to read about her unique ways in chapter four:

a friend, philosopher and guide


The final candidate was Sergey.

“If there’s one thing that you’d like to change about our education system, what would it be?” I asked him.

“I’d do away with the testing system,” he replied. “No examinations whatsoever.”

That was a bold statement. How would we ever know whether the students really learned if there were no tests and exams? I asked him to explain.

In reply, he opened an album that he had brought along and he showed me a collection of photographs.

The photos spoke volumes about what this teacher was doing to make a significant difference in the lives of his students. He wasn’t teaching them so that he could test and grade them at the end of each term; instead, he was preparing them for life!

I just needed to have him at the school. He could be a wonderful agent of change – a positive change that would impact not only the school but also the society around it.

You’ll read about some of his wonderful ways in the last chapter:

a rebel with a cause


The interview was over but my relationship with these wonderful teachers wasn’t. I felt a deep connection with them. I couldn't wait to see them in action. I wanted to see how they would create their little miracles in the classroom and beyond.

They were all so much like my own teacher from school – the million dollar teacher. He came to our village (which was a grueling five-day walk from the nearest motorway) one day out of nowhere, collected a few kids and adults, sat under a tree and started teaching! In three years, he had established a fully functional school, galvanized the society to the cause of education, filled us with hope and dreams, given us enough reasons to excel and achieve, and then … he left.
We never saw him again.

I am always looking for him. I search him in the eyes of every teacher I meet. I seek his qualities in the teachers I interview. Maybe I am expecting too much. Or maybe not, because wherever I go, whichever school I visit, I always find a million dollar teacher teaching in a corner classroom, inspiring the students to greatness, instilling hope and dreams for the future, showing them reasons and ways to excel and achieve. I find them watching for learning problems, dealing with tough parents, helping students with pertinent issues like peer pressure and bullying, building their self-esteem, providing opportunities for decision-making, guiding them through critical life choices… they’re doing all they can!

How would these five teachers (David, Fatima, Arun, Mei and Sergey) do? How would they awaken genius, power and magic in the classroom? How would they light the fire in their students? How would they transform the world around them?

Join me in the following chapters to find out.

A fantastic tale to delight your heart and ignite your soul

Life skills for young people

An unconventional guide to exceptional teaching

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Study skills for smart students

Posted on 17 April 2010 10:54am in Education


How do smart students study? What specific skills do they use? What are their optimum learning habits? Do they apply any special strategies? How do they learn faster, study better and score higher at exams? What are their secrets?

Their secrets are really no secrets at all. They have a few predictable study habits and they follow some simple rules of learning. Anyone who observes the same strategies will get the same results.

Whole-brain learning
One of the first things to know and apply is what is called whole-brain learning. It’s really a simple concept after all. There are two hemispheres in our brain – the left and the right – joined by a complex neural switching system called the corpus callosum. Each of these sides performs its own special functions. The left side plays a major part in processing the language, logic and mathematics (academic abilities) and the right side mainly deals with music, imagination and pictures (creative activities).

While learning our courses, we generally neglect the right side. But best learning takes place when you engage both sides of the brain.

One reason we remember songs easily is because they use music (right brain activity) and words (left brain activity) together. Similarly, movies use music, pictures and lots of imagination. No wonder we like them so much.

So it would be a pretty good idea to take the services of your right brain while you study. Make use of music, pictures and imagination whenever and as much as possible. Let the right brain do the visualizing while the left brain is busy analyzing. Two brains working together is always better than one struggling alone!

Mind mapping
If you want to engage both sides of your brain in the learning process, then you wouldn’t want to take linear notes starting at the top of the page and ending at the bottom. You’d make a mind map instead and study it.

Mind mapping is a simple tool to brainstorm, organize and store ideas. It’s actually like making a map of what you’re studying (or thinking) using words and pictures. You start from the center with the main idea and put all the related ideas and points on the branches spreading out from that center.

A mind map looks rather like an octopus with main idea as its head and supporting points as its arms. See an example here.

Mind mapping is an effective learning tool because it has food for both the brains - words and pictures. Besides, it gives information to the brain the way it likes it. You see, the brain doesn’t work in neat lines and columns. It processes information on its tree-like dendrites, using special association patterns. You do just that when you make a mind map of what you’re learning.
For more on mind mapping, read Tony Buzan’s excellent book on the subject The Mind Map Book.

Memory systems
There are fantastic memory systems that you can make use of as a student. One of the oldest and most popular is the linking system. “In order to remember any new thing, it must be associated, in some ridiculous way, with something you already know,” says Harry Lorayne, a memory specialist. And that’s really the essential part of this system. You connect new material (what you want to remember) with something common and familiar (that you already know) in some funny way. The crazier and more ridiculous the connection, the better the memory. You can find a good example of this in my book Circle of Excellence.

Then there are other simple and effective methods such as the peg and the number-rhyme system and a whole range of mnemonics. The good news is it doesn’t take long to understand and apply these systems – a week should be good. Read a couple of fine books on the subject such as the ones listed here (25 Power Books for Students) and you’ll be excellent.

The superlearning state
If you want to learn faster, then you’ve got to slow down your brain – down to what is called the alpha level. At this level, the brain is working at a frequency of 8-12 cycles per second. At higher frequencies of beta level (12-16 cycles per second), the brain is surely alert and prompt, but it’s not in the right state for learning. Beta is good for other activities such as talking, driving and playing. Then, at the lower frequencies of theta and delta (0-8 cycles per second) the brain is actually too slow to take in new learning. Alpha is just right – here your brain is slow but alert and open to learning. Researchers believe that when you are in this state of ‘relaxed alertness’, the information you take in goes directly into the subconscious mind. It’s the superlearning state.

How do you put your brain into that state? Through relaxation and music. The best is Baroque music – a 60-beat per minute music from the 17th century. But of course, even your favorite relaxation music will help.

Listen to it (again, Baroque if you can get it!) for about 30 minutes before you sit down to study. Or you can have it playing softly in the background even while you study.

Do it for a few weeks and you’ll begin to see the difference.

Rest and review
Do you know why normal class periods are usually of 40 to 45 minutes? That’s because it’s time to take a quick rest. You can't learn much by pushing your brain too hard for too long at a stretch. After every 30-to-50-minute session of study you need to take a short break – five minutes will do fine. The brain uses this downtime to make sense of what has been learned and to organize and store the stuff in their right places. And as your brain is doing its critical duties behind closed doors, you can just stretch and relax. Or if you wish, you can jump, hum or doodle. Do whatever pleases you. Just don’t study. Then, after five minutes, you’re back to work, ready to learn more.

Now something about revision. You can study like crazy, but if don’t review and revise at regular intervals, you’re wasting a lot of good energy.

Most of what you’ve learned will have gone from your head within the next 24 hours if you do not review it. Within a week or two, you may have nothing to show for it. So a smart thing to do is, after you’ve studied anything, review it immediately in about 5 to 10 minutes. Review it again in 24 hours, then again in a week and then again in a month. Each review may take less than five minutes, but this short-term investment will deposit well in your long-term memory.

Speed reading
You may think that if you read slowly and deliberately, word by word, you will understand better. But no, it works the other way round. The faster you read, the better you understand.

The brain itself is designed to understand things quite fast. Would you understand a movie better if they rolled the film fast or if they showed you one frame at a time (taking a couple of months to finish the complete movie)? Would you understand a joke better if I told you the whole thing in one shot or if I told you one word a day?

So learn to read fast. One simple way to do so is to train your eyes to jump from one group of words to another. Not glide in a straight line, but jump. You’ll find clear instructions on how to do this in my book Circle of Excellence in the section titled How to study better, learn faster and score higher.

Individual learning styles
You learn best if you follow your own learning style, of course. For example, if you are an auditory learner, then you will learn better and faster if you listen to things. Why not record all your notes and listen to them on your mp3 player? That’s a cool way to learn! You could even put the stuff into some kind of music and then sing it. Sounds good, doesn’t it?

If you are a visual learner, then you could draw pictures of what you’re learning. Design colorful mind maps rather than take the usual black-n-white notes. Make mental movies of the matter to learn and then play them in your head while you lie on the couch. That’s what you call having fun while you learn!

If you are a kinesthetic learner who has to touch or feel or do something to get a grasp on the subject, then don’t sit still and moan. Get into action. Dribble a ball while you learn. Dance while you study. Act the part. Do something!

As a student, you’re going to have to learn a lot of stuff – some of it important and relevant to life and some of it hopelessly outdated and useless stuff. But learn you must whether it’s for life or for the exams. If you adopt smart and creative ways to learn, you’ll do yourself a world of good. On the one hand, you’ll save yourself a lot of time and effort. On the other, you will score better, which counts too. On top of it all, you will develop a genuine love of learning because for you it won’t be a chore anymore, but a creative adventure. It will serve you for life.

All the best.

A fantastic tale to delight your heart and ignite your soul

Life skills for young people

An unconventional guide to exceptional teaching

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A test of multiple intelligences

Posted on 31 July 2009 04:49am in Education

You’ve heard of Multiple Intelligences, haven’t you? Harvard professor Howard Gardner came up with this theory way back in the early 80s. He said that we don’t have one intelligence; rather we have eight or more intelligences. Some of these intelligences are dominant in us and some are less prominent. For example, some of us may be highly competent at reading and writing tasks (linguistic intelligence) while others may be exceptionally good at science and numbers (logical-mathematical intelligence) and some others may be masterful at art and design (visual-spatial intelligence). The truth is, everyone’s intelligent in some way.

So what are the different intelligences? Here are the eight clearly identified ones:
Bodily-kinesthetic
Interpersonal
Verbal-linguistic
Logical-mathematical
Naturalistic
Intrapersonal
Visual-spatial
Musical

And it’s not very difficult to identify these intelligences. Here’s a quick little test:

Updating....

A fantastic tale to delight your heart and ignite your soul

Life skills for young people

An unconventional guide to exceptional teaching

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The power of a teacher

Posted on 23 May 2009 08:25pm in Education

Come to the edge.
We might fall.
Come to the edge.
It’s too high!
COME TO THE EDGE!
And they came,
and he pushed,
and they flew.
-Christopher Logue, British poet

Every kid is a genius. Any doubt about it?

No.

Then why do we need education, schools, and teachers?

To push them off the edge, to show them that they can, to tell them that they are geniuses.

Yes, kids are geniuses, but their genius is yet unexplored. We need education to explore and exploit that genius. We need schools to provide them with opportunities of exploration and discovery. And we need teachers to gently lead them to their greatness.

Indeed, it's the teachers. You can never tell what power they hold in the lives of children. They can ignite passion, inspire greatness, and expose genius from the very core. They shape countless lives and they steer the course of the world.

That is, if they know.

Many teachers do, and we have all felt their influence. It is as if they hold a magic wand in their hands. And there are those who do not know, and in place of the magic wand, they hold a cane of torture in their hands.

Let's see if this teacher in the excerpt below knows what she is doing. The excerpt is from Little Master (Chapter 9: What a teacher!)

"But you are not caterpillars!" the teacher thundered, all of a sudden.

Everyone turned to look at her. They were not surprised at all, rather they were all very eager. Eager to hear what she had to say and eager to see what she had to show.
The boys and girls looked at their teacher with hungry eyes and craving hearts.

She too looked deep into their eyes and peered into their throbbing hearts.

Their eyes were lovely. She had a wild desire to draw a picture on the canvas of those eyes. She knew she could draw and paint anything that she liked there. She could freely paint the scenes of a deadly past and a gloomy future. But then, she decided to splash them with the colors of life.

Now their hearts. She always had a free access into their hearts. She knew their hearts were as large as the world itself. Yet they were so fragile she could burst them with one piercing word. So she chose to build them up.

Such is the power of a teacher!

"You are heroes and champions, geniuses and giants," she declared, and her words echoed. "Shine, my little stars, shine. You have enough brightness in you to illuminate the whole world."

To the little boy, the teacher's words were like a bolt of lightning. He got a pleasant shock and he shivered.

That was when he realized that he had been imagining things. There was no teacher, no garden, no butterflies. It was all his imagination.

"Everything's possible in imagination," the little boy said to himself wistfully. What a teacher she was! She saw her students as who they could be in life. And they saw her as an angel. What a way to see each other!

Truly, what a way to see each other! And what a teacher!

A fantastic tale to delight your heart and ignite your soul

Life skills for young people

An unconventional guide to exceptional teaching

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