In a curious turn of events, after reading Richard Dawkins' Essay "Sanderson of Oundle" (from A Devil's Chaplain) on Friday night, I went on to watch "Taare Zamin Par" on Saturday. Both are touching stories of great teachers. And it made me take a walk down the memory lane and think about my own teachers.
One name that immediately comes to my mind is Mr. P.K.Patil, affectionately known as PKP, a teacher of great repute from Kolhapur, from whom I had the fortune to learn HSC physics. He has been teaching physics for past 32 years, and has taught literally to generations of students. His students have gone to fame and fortune in a variety of fields.
Maybe you can tell a great teacher from a mere good one in just one lecture. One thing that struck me immediately was his boundless enthusiasm for students. He not only introduced us to the marvels of physics but successfully imparted his enthusiasm on us. He also helped ease the transition of many of us from a 'marathi medium shala' to an 'all english college'. Now physics is a highly mathematical subject and you had to solve tons of numerical problems, but his captivating illustrations never let you get bored. Consider this, while teaching about heat, he placed a book on his head and moved back and forth on the dais in a demonstration of a molecule carrying heat, or consider his demo of circular motion with door and chair. And here is the best part, he could churn out an approximate answer to a numerical problem in just a couple of seconds. This useful technique of 'back-of-the-envelope calculations on-the-back-of-your-mind' has remained with us ever since.
He also taught us to value what is really important and ignore the rest. Unlike many other teachers he never encouraged wasting time to beatify your notebooks, what was important was physics (As a side effect of this, our notebooks resembled something written in hieroglyphs plus Linear B). Sometimes his talk ventured in philosophy, like the question of existence of god from the point of view of a physics teacher. But whatever be the topic, his exposition was always enriching.
Thank you, Sir.
One name that immediately comes to my mind is Mr. P.K.Patil, affectionately known as PKP, a teacher of great repute from Kolhapur, from whom I had the fortune to learn HSC physics. He has been teaching physics for past 32 years, and has taught literally to generations of students. His students have gone to fame and fortune in a variety of fields.
Maybe you can tell a great teacher from a mere good one in just one lecture. One thing that struck me immediately was his boundless enthusiasm for students. He not only introduced us to the marvels of physics but successfully imparted his enthusiasm on us. He also helped ease the transition of many of us from a 'marathi medium shala' to an 'all english college'. Now physics is a highly mathematical subject and you had to solve tons of numerical problems, but his captivating illustrations never let you get bored. Consider this, while teaching about heat, he placed a book on his head and moved back and forth on the dais in a demonstration of a molecule carrying heat, or consider his demo of circular motion with door and chair. And here is the best part, he could churn out an approximate answer to a numerical problem in just a couple of seconds. This useful technique of 'back-of-the-envelope calculations on-the-back-of-your-mind' has remained with us ever since.
He also taught us to value what is really important and ignore the rest. Unlike many other teachers he never encouraged wasting time to beatify your notebooks, what was important was physics (As a side effect of this, our notebooks resembled something written in hieroglyphs plus Linear B). Sometimes his talk ventured in philosophy, like the question of existence of god from the point of view of a physics teacher. But whatever be the topic, his exposition was always enriching.
Thank you, Sir.
