The Trade of Teacher Training - Schools often send teachers to training programmes on topics ranging from self-development to online education to teacher-less education. It is indeed very big business for trainers, and many schools spend thousands of rupees every year towards updating their teachers' skills as well as exposing them to newer methods and techniques of education. It is only on very few occasions that teachers go to these kinds of programmes voluntarily with a definite interest to improve and improvise. Most often, for many teachers, it is a getaway from the dreary and routine activities.
Many times, I have observed that teachers would not even be aware of the purpose of the workshop. They would have been informed the previous evening by way of a summons to the principal's chamber or a simple oral communication that since such and such workshop is being organised, such and such teachers would be going, and their expenses would be met by the school. Sometimes, it is only made known to a teacher in the morning of the workshop that a workshop of a certain kind is being organised and that she is expected to go there as the school had decided to participate. As there is every kind of workshop being organised these days on topics as diverse and sometimes strange, such as a workshop on using vegetables to teach arithmetic or a workshop on using music to teach chemistry, teachers who get an opportunity to go to this workshop go with almost a shocking sense of indifference that is sometimes writ across their faces.
Workshops and training programmes for teachers, if organised professionally (let us at least for now not delve into the conduct), constitute the educator training business, the annual turnover of which must certainly be tens of lakhs of rupees. There are workshops that charge three hundred rupees per teacher per day to about five thousand rupees if the resource person has an international background to his expertise. While teacher training institutes offer training based on the outcome of the organisation's or the resource person's experience and toil, some others offer courses and training just by coining fancy titles and putting together an impressive multimedia presentation coupled with some activities.
Most teachers go to these workshops with a 'what do we have here to learn?' rather than a 'can we learn something here too?' attitude. Though as teachers the participants would have had some basic training in child development and innovative methods of education, the very mindset that prevents the teachers from benefiting from these workshops is that any background information to the subject in terms of the evolution of the method and understanding the research that gives a scientific basis to the findings.
For example, if the workshop is about using theatre in the classroom, teachers want to know only about how to use theatre and nothing about why theatre should be used at all. What led to this need to use theatre and why theatre instead of any other form of art in that particular case? Once, in a workshop about developing language ability in children, the participating teachers shocked the resource person by asking him why it was important for them to know about languages, whereas they only wanted to learn about developing language skills. So some organisers have found an easy way out of it by putting together a tasty recipe for these workshops by making these workshops participant-friendly rather than useful. A day well spent outside the school for many teachers.
Many teachers want the workshops to be interactive. If one should ask a teacher what she exactly means by interactive, the reply would make one understand that what a teacher means by interactive is to make it participative. Okay, why not? Most workshops are interactive, as in where there is interaction between the resource person and the participants. Every workshop cannot be made hundred percent activity-based. Even if it is a workshop about introducing language and sounds to children through music, the workshop cannot be a music show. The resource person may even spend more than a day to establish the fact as to how the technique was conceptualised by even him relating the saga of his experience and experiments. Instead, to entertain teachers because they would have come with the hope of listening to music is preposterous.
After all, how many teachers go back to school after a workshop and try out their newfound skills and knowledge in the classroom? Very few. Many teachers would not even remember the topic before they are sent off to another workshop. Apart from in subjects directly related to classrooms and minor correction in teaching skills, any workshop even suggesting a change on the part of the teachers is totally unacceptable to the teacher, as the first reason would be the numbers in the classroom, and the other most convenient reason would be portions.
These things may not bother such organisations or individuals who may organise such workshops for profit, but what about the other kind who want to share the valuable information with the people on the field, namely the teachers? It would be such a sad state if the trainer starts making the efforts of a salesman to hard-sell his concepts by making a song and dance of it.