Of Gatherings, Classrooms, and Other Irritations

It has been a while since I last wrote anything for the blog. Not for want of things to write about, certainly, but because life, with its peculiar talent for filling every available hour, has kept me occupied.

The past few weeks have been particularly eventful on the professional front. I had the pleasure of organising two academic gatherings: the second edition of the TOK Compendium and the second edition of the Language and Literature Meet Up. Both brought together some of the finest minds working in these fields, and both were reminders of why intellectual communities matter, especially in a profession that can sometimes feel needlessly solitary.

David Spooner is, as always, an absolute delight to be around. There is something wonderfully reassuring about people whose company remains a pleasure irrespective of whether the conversation concerns the intricacies of pedagogy or the more inconsequential business of life. Chitra Jeyakumar and Prithvi Sinha are powerhouses in their respective domains, and I have always enjoyed their company, both within the confines of academic discourse and beyond them. Abhinandan travelled all the way from Mumbai, Pallavi from New Delhi, and Vimal joined us from Singapore. The time, effort, and intellectual generosity that went into making these gatherings possible were deeply appreciated.

Vimal and I go way back.

To listen to these two, is a pleasure.

The after-event party was fun as hell!

Both events were received warmly, and the feedback from participants has been gratifying. There is a particular satisfaction in creating spaces where people can exchange ideas, challenge assumptions, learn from one another, and leave with something more substantial than a collection of notes and photographs. If these gatherings have contributed, even in some small measure, to the conversations taking place in our respective academic communities, I consider the effort worthwhile.

For now, however, I think I have done my bit. At least for a while.

The business of organising, coordinating, inviting, persuading, planning, and ensuring that everything comes together must give way to the business of teaching. My DP2 students await me, armed with a formidable collection of unfinished business: TOK essays, HL essays, Extended Essays, and Individual Orals. And that is only the portion of their academic lives that falls within my immediate purview. Their subject specific Internal Assessments remain, along with the other demands of the Diploma Programme, waiting patiently for their attention, or perhaps conspiring quietly against their peace of mind.

I must admit that I have considerable faith in this particular batch of students. Having taught enough students over the years to recognise the difference between potential and its realisation, I believe this is a particularly promising group. They are capable of considerably more than they sometimes allow themselves to achieve. The intellectual resources are there; the ability is there. What remains, in several cases, is a shift in attitude, a greater willingness to take ownership of their learning, and the recognition that potential, however impressive, is merely a promise until one does something with it.

I hope they make that shift. More importantly, I hope they make it before the opportunities to do so begin to disappear. There is only so much a teacher can do. One can guide, provoke, encourage, challenge, and occasionally drive oneself to the brink of exasperation. One cannot, however, do the thinking for another person. At some point, the student must decide that the work is worth doing, and that the effort required is not an unreasonable price to pay for becoming a little more capable, a little more independent, and a little more intellectually honest.

And then there are the other irritations.

What has been getting on my nerves lately is the opinion of the less informed and, occasionally, the less intelligent on matters I deal with professionally. People who have the IQ that matches the temperature of the room they reside in seem to have developed an extraordinary confidence in their ability to determine how I ought to teach, what I ought to prioritise, and how my classroom ought to function. It is a curious phenomenon: the less one appears to know about a subject, the less one sometimes hesitates to pronounce upon it.

I do not object to disagreement. Quite the contrary. A good argument, particularly one that forces me to reconsider an assumption, is always welcome. But there is a difference between questioning a professional's judgement and presuming that one possesses the expertise to replace it. Education, unfortunately, seems to attract a fair amount of the latter. The classroom is a complex space, and fifteen years of teaching have taught me that what works cannot always be captured in a policy document or prescribed by someone who has never had to negotiate the unpredictable realities of a room full of learners.

These wonderful teachers are hope for a good future. I just hope they won't get run off the road by idiots.

I have also been fortunate in the people I work with every day. Agnus, Chinnu, and Sindhu, my colleagues in the English team, are not merely wonderful teachers but also excellent companions in the daily business of navigating a school, its demands, its occasional absurdities, and its many small victories. There is something invaluable about working alongside people who take their responsibilities seriously without taking themselves too seriously all the time. Teaching can be an exhausting business, and the company of colleagues who understand both its intellectual demands and its everyday madness make a considerable difference. I am grateful to have them around.

They are friends and mentors I turn to when things get dark. Even Batman/Bruce Wayne needed an Alfred and a Commissioner Gordon to keep him alive from Joker(s)!

And then there are Saikrishna and Praveen, two experienced teachers and friends whose company I have come to value enormously. In the end, perhaps, these are the people one needs most: those who have been around long enough to know that teaching is rarely as straightforward as the latest educational prescription would have us believe. Over the years, I have occasionally found myself questioning my methods, wondering whether I ought to be doing things differently, or simply entertaining the possibility that I might have got something terribly wrong. Without conversations with these two, I would probably have driven myself mad thinking, rethinking, and second-guessing practices that have, after all, seen batches of students navigate the Diploma Programme rather successfully over the last fifteen years. Experience does not make one infallible, nor should it render one impervious to criticism. But it does offer perspective, and sometimes the most useful thing a fellow teacher can do is remind you of what you already know, what you have already tried, and what the evidence of your own classroom tells you. I suspect I would have spent considerably more time doubting myself without them, and considerably less time enjoying the work.

I shall leave the matter there for now. It deserves a post of its own, and I suspect I shall return to it when I can write about it with greater patience and considerably less irritation.

For now, the essays await, the deadlines approach, and my students need whatever time and attention I can give them. The classroom, after all, remains the place where my energies are best spent.

The blog can wait a little longer. The students, unfortunately, cannot.