A YESHA Javaid is a teacher of social sciences at Bahria College. Having done her Masters in Political Science, she is currently busy doing her MS in the same subject while she teaches at the college. Ayesha considers teaching at the school level a good starting point for fresh masters or graduate students looking to step into the teaching profession.

“Being young yourself, you can easily understand students’ problems,” she says. Ayesha opted for the teaching profession with much zeal and enthusiasm about helping bring up the future generation.

About the subject she teaches, Ayesha says that there was a constant demand for the removal of social studies from primary school courses in the past but it is a very important subject as the entire world emphasizes on social studies, it being a complete source of history, where you get to know your country’s past; geography, which helps you understand your environment; and civics through which you get to understand your rights and duties, etc.

Not that much in favour of traditional teaching methods where children are made to sit quietly in the classroom, the young teacher tries creating a perfect vision for acquiring knowledge. “Yes, students should be given a chance to visit historical sites as well as museums as it is always more helpful, not to mention fascinating, to see things rather than study them in books.” Ayesha also wants an increase in the teaching schedule. “We hardly get 60 teaching days per term in which we are to cover eight to 15 chapters, a tough task for teachers to cope with. Besides, it also has an effect on the students, who start cramming their lessons instead of trying to understand them,” she says.

Coming back to her own subject, Ayesha points towards it being rather dry in content. “Although we can’t change the topics, we can try to make them more interesting through practical work, presentations, competitions, project works and through skits as it is easy to understand the subject this way,” she says while adding, “Students have sensitive minds. Instead of imposing strictness, we should make an effort to understand their psychology and help them register the knowledge with tenderness.” About the procedure of examination, Ayesha compares the three-hour paper with the Multiple Choice Question (MCQ) paper.

“There is a big difference between the three-hour question paper and the multiple choice paper, which can be respectively categorized as the expressing and showing of knowledge.

The three-hour paper gives a chance to the students to express their knowledge and understanding by also providing their views and ideas regarding a subject while the multiple choice is just a show of knowledge.

“MCQs are fine for entry tests or as a 10-minute objective paper where one can also get away with a fluke but to judge one’s knowledge it is better to have a three-hour paper as that can become a mirror to the student’s mind,” she explains.

Speaking about what follows examinations, Ayesha says that scoring in exams is considered enough achievement for school children but this can be further diversified by starting competitions at the government level, which while encouraging the students would also bring a sense of achievement in them along with the added confidence (Dawn)

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