Teaching in the 21st Century: A Proclamation from the noisy Classroom By: Sonam K Gyamtsho

I have often been baffled by the existence of varied definitions of teaching. Many experts in the field of education have crafted various definitions of what constitutes teaching. Some say that teaching is an art. Some claim that it is a science. Still further, there are majority of others who profoundly state that teaching, besides everything, is a profession. Perhaps, the best way to define teaching is to call it what it should be called a profession. It is a profession that is more than the interaction of a student and a teacher over a subject in the school setting. But what does it beckon? It is a profession that calls for well trained bus drivers to ride ahead to the future of stability, carefully guiding over curves, turns and twists of the road. In the 21st century Bhutanese classroom, it calls for mechanisms with walls that are porous and transparent, connecting teachers, students and the community to the wealth of knowledge that exists in the world. Today, we are being challenged to transform educational outcomes, often under very difficult conditions. We are being directed to prepare students with the competencies they need to become contributing citizens in the 21st century. We are also further asked to ensure that every student has a chance to succeed and to deal with increasing challenges in our classrooms so as to have quality access to the quality education. But as Ingersoll remarked, teaching requires high degree of initiative, thought, judgment and skills if it must succeed. Do we have all these qualities in our teachers? Do we give them space and resources enough for them to cultivate these qualities? These are no trivial questions. What should we do now? How should we update ourselves to suit the requirements of the 21 st century Bhutanese classroom teachings? The sit and get lecture and notes culture has long vanished from our system. The silently nodding type students of the past have long disappeared with the onset of digitally literate, mobile and interactive students of the present flat world. To our present students, computers are no more technology. They are just part of their life experience background. In the continuously accelerating information world, teaching and learning has become

a lifelong process of coping with change. The contents of our lessons are less important than manipulating content resources. Learning how to learn and teach is the basis of education in this 21st century. But, in the midst of all these changes, one thing has remained constant. It has remained unchanged even in these evolutionary moments. It is the 22 hours of teaching periods with minimum facilities. When the basic requirement hasnt changed, how can we, as teachers and the school leaders, cope with the change and equip ourselves to the need of the 21st century students in our classrooms? In a decade of my journey in this profession, I have used all my strengths to keep with the change and meet the daunting challenges confronted in our classrooms. The teaching energy that we teachers call as passion for teaching is almost getting drained out now. Having received better opportunities of visiting and learning from the outside than many of my counterparts, I would like to share and suggest some changes to the system. I understand the perilousness of my puerility. But I would like to take the risk if my suggestions were of some importance for discussions in the official conference of our authorities. As a teacher in the field, the first immediate change that I would suggest is that teacher policy needs to ensure that teachers work in an environment that facilitates success and that encourages effective teachers to continue teaching. And the first thing that comes to my mind is the number of periods that our teachers teach. The present requirement is the minimum 22 hours a week. But in reality, we have teachers teaching 37 periods of 50 minutes in a week in some schools. And in most of the schools, we have teachers teaching 30 plus periods of 50 minutes each in a week. This leaves our teachers exhausted. It hinders in providing quality output. Note books of students are hardly checked by teachers. He or she cannot, for time runs like an arrow for teachers. Thus, if the quality output is expected from teachers and if students note books are to be thoroughly checked and reinforced correctly on time, the number of teaching periods must be reduced to 10 to 12 periods in a week for every teacher across the kingdom. In many high-performing education systems like in Finland, Singapore and Sweden, teachers only have a period or two in a day. This provides adequate time for teachers to prepare for improving educational outcomes; in having a fewer periods, they are the centre of the improvement efforts themselves.

The next thing that I would like to suggest to meet the demands of the 21st century is the engagement of our teachers in the educational reforms. If our system were to succeed, then our educational reforms must be initiated from the bottom up to the top level. Learning outcomes at school are the result of what happens in our classrooms, thus only reforms that are successfully implemented in classrooms can be expected to be effective. Therefore, our teachers, I feel, must be engaged in the development and implementation of educational reforms. The educational reform will not work unless it is supported from the bottom up. This requires those responsible for change to both communicate their aims well and involve the teachers from the fields in all the educational reforms that the ministry might initiate. Teachers are the architects of change, not just its implementers. The third change that I would like to propose is of transforming teaching through the use of multimedia formats. Teaching does not just involve high quality education, it also requires that those who are now teaching adapt to constantly changing demands. Effective development of teachers in service demands both more and different forms of professional development and appropriate facilities in place in our schools. It is high time for our classrooms to have at least some required technological facilities to facilitate learning. Students of the 21st century in Bhutan live in the world of digital, audio and text. Due to the easy accessibility to such facilities, our students expect similar approach in our classrooms. Therefore, our schools across the kingdom must at least have a well equipped collaborative classroom where teachers could use web 2.0 for teaching. Collaborative immersion through the use of technology such as videoconferencing and whiteboard integration will meet the learning needs and expectations of the 21st century learners. Schools in Australia and Singapore, it is rare to find teachers using the chalk and the chalkboard. Use of multimedia formats has produced not only quality education but quality products. The fourth change that I would like to focus is on media literacy in schools. I understand that with the introduction of GNH aspects in our curriculum, media literacy has found some place in it. But it lacks emphasis. Media literacy skills are a must for students to address real-world issues, from the environment to poverty. Media literacy involves teaching the skills that will empower students to become sensitive to the politics of representations of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, and other cultural differences in order to foster critical thinking and enhance democratization. It is high time for our schools in the country to make our students find their voices by creating projects

using multimedia and delivering these products to real-world audiences and realize that they can make a difference and change the world. Media literacy provides a platform for students to learn what it is to be a contributing citizen, and carry these citizenship skills forward throughout their lives. Our schools across the kingdom must provide emphasis to media literacy and make our students not only learn to filter, sieve the contents but also enter into the global classroom to interact and work in collaboration with others. Since, we are living in an increasingly diverse, globalized, and complex, media-saturated world; the schools must be educated and provided with required facilities to cope with the change and suit to the concept of the 21st century teaching. The final suggestion that I would like to propose is the formation of the Dzongkhag Education Council in every Dzongkhag. The role of this council should be purely to address the professional development needs of the teachers in the Dzongkhag. The council can review and recommend some of the professional programs to be incorporated in a year in the Dzongkhag level for teachers so that our teachers are kept updated accordingly. Since, the teachers role is no more of dispensing facts and theories in the classroom; it is also a time for us to have regional council that will cater to needs and aspirations of teachers and make our teachers as participants in the learning process. In todays fast changing world in our classrooms, teachers are also forced to learn to communicate in the language and style of todays students. But many of us fail to do. And in such need of the time, we look for refuge. Dzongkhag Education Council, if instituted, can rescue teachers from the harsh reality of this ever expanding world of technology through professional development programs, provided the council is not diluted with other administrative issues. Finally, it is in the hands of bus drivers to take the passengers safely to the destinations or to fly over the sharp bends and end in the deep gorges of ignorance. The most important persons in this journey are not the passengers but the bus drivers. They have to be made professionally competent to deliver safe services to passengers boarding the buses. Until the drivers are equipped well with new required tools of todays world, the new buses are sure to fly over the sharp curves, bends or twists of our roads only to land into the deep and steep gorges. We still have time to initiate the change before the buses start flying.