The six-day Viveka Samsmarana, a series of workshops for students and teachers related to value education, concluded here on Saturday. The programme was a part of the 150 birth anniversary celebrations of Swami Vivekananada by the Ramakrishna Math.
The concluding day was the ‘Viveka Kirana’, a workshop on value education for college teachers. It was inaugurated by Environment Minister B. Ramanath Rai. Health Minister U.T. Khader participated in the programme.
On Friday, teachers from various schools were in for an interesting presentation from educationalist Suresh Kulkarni (66) from Dharwad. Mr. Kulkarni, a retired science and mathematics teacher from Karnatak High School Dharwad, showed how teachers could use some of the tools to effectively communicate better. “It is necessary to keep it (the subject) simple for students to understand.”
Talking of the tools to teach about shapes, he had a small plastic cover containing rectangular, square, triangles, pentagon, hexagon and semicircle and irregular shapes done in colour paper. Each of these shapes has a piece of sand paper on it back so that they stick to a cloth. He spread out a piece of cloth on the black board and used the shapes to create a house, a hill, a fish and clouds. “This is one of the ways you can ingrain and idea about shapes in the child’s mind.”
Swami Nirbhayananda, president of Ramakrishna Vivekananda Asharam in Gadag, emphasised the need for teaches love their students. They should not just restrict students to syllabus but turn them into researchers. “You see students excelling in subjects taught by teachers they love,” he said. Teachers have a huge responsibility of preparing students with values and patriotism, he said.
