Salima Moosa Sewani has been in the field of teaching for 8 years. She is running her own Learning Center and also working with the Exceptional People in Pakistan. She is a Master Trainer and has done many teaching certifications.

Teaching - A Challenging And Reflective Profession
Challenges of Curriculum (part 1)
Challenges of Curriculum (part 2)

The Art of Story Telling

Understanding Mathematic Disability

Teaching - A Challenging
And Reflective Profession

By Salima Moosa Sewani

Teaching is a profession of learning and growing intellectually. The learning of a teacher only takes place, when s/he agrees to bring changes and to accept criticism from others. When I started teaching, with time I understood that I had many flaws, which I accepted whole heartedly. I was a person, who always looks for improvement. Gradually I realized that I became a better teacher, and that happened because of taking feedback from others and by being conscious of the effectiveness of my teaching style and strategies. During my vast teaching experience, I always followed this quote,

“To reach the highest, always start with the lowest.”

From the issue of curriculum to the issue of lesson planning; from the identification of children with learning problems to the issues related to teachers' de-motivation, I came across many challenges.

After the completion of my Montessori training dated back in 2001, I joined the Progressive Public School for teaching practicum. There, I came across one challenging student. On the last month of my teaching practice, one child with tantrums entered my class. Within no time, he started a tantrum, shouting in the class. He was moving like a pendulum without any fear of a teacher’s presence. When I tried to make him sit, he hit me and spat on me. When I gave him an activity to paste a picture, he tore his and others' activity sheet. The whole class was distracted due to his aggressive behavior. I was very confused as to what to do and how to control his behavior. I scolded him, but it didn’t work. Maybe my strategy to deal with him was wrong. I used many techniques to tackle him, but he didn’t respond to any strategies. I detected few of his problems which helped me to categorize the major solution of problems. First was his lack of understanding. He was never able to follow the instruction given by me. The second problem was his chronological age. The average age of the class was 4 to 5 , but he was 10 years old.  It showed that the normal milestone progression of his development was delayed.  The third problem was his learning capacity, which was almost zero as compared to the other children learning, which was average. His fourth main problem was his hyper-activity - he didn’t sit on his seat. I tried to make him sit beside me by holding his hands, but all the time, he broke his arms free and ran away from class. I used to chase him, because he used to run all over the school and kick anyone who grasped him. After a week, there were no changes felt by me and my efforts ended in smoke. I tried to explain this to my headmistress, but she didn’t accept my assertion and gave the same statement that "it’s your duty to manage him in class."

At that time, I was working with the Aga Khan Rehabilitation Centre. I had taken a few trainings of Inclusive Education, which helped me to identify that he had a behavior problem. I consulted his parents. Initially the mother didn’t accept that the child had a behavior problem but after convincing, the parents accepted that their child was hyperactive since childhood. The mother of the child was uneducated and the father was busy in his big business.  That’s why they never initiated a consult with any psychologist to modify his behavior.

Behavior problems and what is normal behavior in a child is determined by the child’s age, physical and emotional development, personality and what is socially and culturally acceptable in his or her surroundings.[1]

I came to know that this was his fourth school and the previous schools expelled him due to his behavior problems due to which his educational development delayed.  Afterwards, I talked to the headmistress and discussed the whole scenario. She agreed and allowed me to start the parents' counseling. Being a reflective practitioner, I encouraged his parents to send him to any other school where he could learn and adjust in a proper environment. There were some schools in Karachi which were catering such children. His parents agreed. I was fortunate that my decision was right! Today, he’s studying in a normal school. If I wouldn’t have sent him to the relevant school, he might have lost his years without learning any thing. 

The second issue which I would like to raise is the challenges that teachers face. During my teaching practicum for STEP, I decided to teach class seven. I saw the lesson plans and the files of the preceding year. I saw that there was no proper lesson planning being done by the teachers. The teachers told me that they used to teach students from the curriculum book rather than initiating any proper planning.

“The teacher is the good leader of the class and future generation. The teacher has to play a variety of roles which will assist to growth and development of student personalities”

Then I asked the previous students and took their feedback which gave me an idea that there were no activities for any lesson. The teacher taught in a theoretical way. No audio visual aids were being used.

Being a reflective teacher, I worked a lot and developed a few lesson plans according to the students' level and need. Teaching should be practical and revolutionary, so I used effective and innovative strategies in which students participated to the extent possible. Every day I energized my students by using different stories and activities. I used library books to integrate my lessons with the Quran, Ginan and Farman. The strategy to teach students with integrated activities worked a lot and they all showed tremendous interest and participated fully with enthusiasm.

I am happy to adopt the teaching profession. It has given me a platform to learn a lot. I am trying my level best to fulfill the expectations of my students and to prepare them for the challenges which will be faced by them in the future ahead.

Challenges of Curriculum
(part 1)

By Salima Moosa Sewani

Challenges of Curriculum
(part 2)

By Salima Moosa Sewani

This article is a continuation of the previous article from our first September issue.

The most challenging task for the religion teacher is to integrate and implement the curriculum of primary and secondary effectively. The primary curriculum is not fulfilling the needs of mentally challenged people. During my teaching experience at the Aga Khan special people religious school, I have deeply analyzed that most of the teachers could not teach the primary Ta’lim curriculum to them, because the Intellectual Quotient  of exceptional people is comparatively lower than normal children studying in religious education centre.  I am a proud of the challenged students, who wants to do every thing to fulfill their religious needs as well. I courageously took this challenge and participated in a master training program in inclusive education with few teachers. I also joined Pakistan association research in education to acquire continuous trainings. We developed few lessons plan resources and developed IEP (Individualized Educational Plan) which helped teachers to teach borderline children about faith Tariqah and basic ethics in a diluted form. 

I would suggest that there should be a same curriculum book for them in a more diluted form or there should be a permission granted to the teachers to amend curriculum according to their desires. 

I have one example of my student A. She is in class 7 in Religious Education Centre. She is borderline student. She shared the difficulties which she faced a month back with me. She told me that my class teacher had failed me in all the subjects and forced me to repeat the class; but I don’t want to sit in the same class for the third time. I asked but she refused, because this was third time teacher failed me. When I asked teacher, she told me that A doesn’t understand anything. Therefore, and we can’t promote her. When I asked few questions to A regarding the chapters of history, she was unable to reply even a single question due to typical curriculum for children with special needs.  

Before my teaching practicum, I observed the religious school for a few days, and I found a competitive atmosphere to teach secondary curriculum, given by ITREB for a time being. Teachers are planning lesson plans ineffectively and most of the teachers are not participating in the teacher training courses due to busy schedule. I hope that the future curriculum of secondary will provide adequate knowledge of the subjects to the students for leading a religious life in this progressive world. 

Challenging in the classroom is the most competitive part for teachers. Whether it’s a religious or a secular school, class room interaction is very important while teaching. If there will be no proper classroom interaction, then a child will not grow as per need. Classroom interaction plays a vital and crucial role in effective learning of the children. Teachers are facing lots of challenges during their classroom interaction.  

One of the most important challenges teachers are facing is favoritism. During my observation at the Government school, I saw teachers were giving value to those students which s/he likes a lot and appreciate those, who are extra ordinary brilliant in classroom. Those who are good at studies got the least marks in exams just because of the favoritism of a teacher.  Teachers aren’t motivating and encouraging those children who’re shy and feeble in studies. Their learning becomes stuck due to the wrong attitude of a teacher. I personally faced that challenge, when my supporting teacher was appreciating favoritism in class room. I saw one reserved child in my class, who was avoided by the teacher, most of the time. A was the shy child in my class. He didn’t speak a single sentence in class. I always supported him by praising him and inspiring all the time and tried my best to engage him in group activities. 

Another challenge of classroom interaction is communication. Teachers cannot teach the students in their cultural language, if s/he may find an exceptional case of different background student in his/her class. When I was teaching in Afghan camp back in 1999, the most important challenge I faced was the challenge of communication. They understood neither Urdu nor English. They only used to communicate in Persian. Whenever I taught in Urdu, they laughed which led to disciplinary problems. I took this challenge and worked hard to learn few foundational words and sentences of Persian language. After working hard, I was at least able to communicate them. I also was able to maintain discipline after that.  

One more challenge facing by the teachers is lack of planning in teaching, which I also faced in special night school.  Classroom interaction doesn’t mean within the class, it means to create classroom environment any where, especially for special students. When I joined religious school, I observed that the main focus of all the teachers was on theoretical learning. There was no interactive session in classroom. No indoor and outdoor activities were designed, which could help to create pleasant environment. I talked to my head and took instant action and prepared few activities for them which helped to develop their interest which they required the most rather than traditional classroom environment.                                                                   

Another issue in a class is of time management. Teachers mostly teach in the form of lecture without pre-planning. And when they feel that time is running out, few of the teachers end up their lesson by leaps and bounds, that the students sometimes feel as if their opinions are not being given enough priority. I believe, that a lesson should be pre- planned and if, incase, teachers will not be able to cover the course on time, even then, they should at least make the most out of their teaching.  

An important challenge in the classroom is classroom management as it’s very important to create and sustain healthy environment in the class through which child learning capability will be developed. When I started teaching in Karachi Kids University, I was given a room with no proper arrangement for children. There was very limited space; but the number of students was more due to which students were not feeling comfortable. I went to the administrator and asked her to divide students into two groups and allocate another class through which they can study at ease. After that initiative, children thoroughly enjoyed the studies. Our books also reflect that males are dominant in our society. 

Dr. Zaira Wahab expresses his opinion, 
“Gender inequality is a problem embedded in the fabric of Pakistan’s social structure. The problem emanates at the primary level, as low participation and high dropouts at this stage prevent females from reaching higher education and equitable opportunities for such furtherance do not become available to the female gender...…when both girls and boys are given opportunity to practice language in classroom activities, the girls will get lesser practice chances as their dialogues are shorter and fewer.”² 

I agree, because during my teaching practicum in Government school, the challenge that I faced was of gender biasness. I saw many teachers giving importance and lots of attention to boys rather than girls. Females were discouraged to participate in class room. Due to that gender biasness, girls showed lack of interest in studies and their grades were low as compared to boys. During my teaching practicum, I tried to assure females students of their equal importance in class participation.  I gave equal importance to both genders by which female students feel relaxed and their curiosity towards learning was developed. 

I must conclude,

“Sometimes struggle are exactly what we need in our life. If nature allowed us to go through our life without any obstacles, it would cripple us.”( anonymous) 

The Art of Story Telling

By Salima Moosa Sewani

Storytelling is an art. It takes dexterity to expose the creative person inside us. When we play with any toy, we pretend to walk, talk, and act the same as that figure. We might be telling a story about a fairy, or we might be having a birthday party, or, conceivably, we may be going on some outings. The fun of playing by ourselves is in making different sounds and many gestures. We try to set different emotions in order to make our expressions clear and full of reality.

When we tell a story to anyone, for example let’s suppose a child,  we do follow the outline of beginning, middle, and end. We fill in details of our senses, emotions, feelings, expressions, etc. We try to locate the timings and make our story more interesting by adding descriptive words in it.

To be frank with you all, telling a story is not a cup of tea for everyone. It requires dedication and skills to fill it with emotions. I would suggest to teachers not to duplicate any characters. Be real!  Use gestures and always move from one place to another to grasp the attention of your audience. Everyone must start as who they are and let the action and the description of the story inspire us to play. There is no right or wrong way to tell a story except to be ourselves, relax, and have fun with the pleasure of sharing a story.

During my teaching career, I have used many techniques to teach students with the help of stories full of life. Here are some of the suggestions that might help you to become a good story teller.

The first step is to write it. Make your habit to fill the your words full of expressions and ideas in your writing. I, myself, am struggling to be a good writer, and that's what the dedication is (which is required from your side too) to be passionate about trying and learning things. The idea for your story may be based on an old tale or it might come right from your mind, but it must be put into your own words and then told with your own style of telling.  Never plagiarize a story or copy words. It might make your story artificial. There are many ways to tell the same story.  When you tell a story, you must imagine it just as if you were there.

Choose a favorite story from your school or college library or you can even try newspapers to get a good story. Websites can also help you a lot to get different tales.

First: Make an outline of each important plot point of the tale in sequential order: a true beginning, middle, and end. This outline is a map that will remind us where the story is going, even if we experiment by taking a few detours. Add some details and scenes that no one has ever thought of before. It should be unique and should please your listeners.

Second: start writing your first scene. Look at your outline and brainstorm. Work in a group to get a lot of ideas. You can arrange workshops for the teachers in order to gain different ideas before transforming it into reality. I still remember that while attending workshops at the Aga Khan University , Institute of Education , we brought many ideas by working in a group, and then formulate the effective lessons on the basis of our own thoughts and unique ideas. You may discover new actions to add to your outline or change the order of the outlined actions. You may make several outlines before you are done.

Ask yourself these questions:

*  Who are the characters in your story?

*  What is happening?

*  Why is there a problem?

*  Where and when does the scene take place?

*  Can you describe what the setting looks like?

*  By whom? By what?, etc.

List the senses:  seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching details of the pretend world of the play. Imagine you can hear what the characters are saying. Imagine and write the dialogue of the scene. Pretend to walk and talk like them. 

Third:  Imagine that you are one of the characters in the play. Write down the story from your point of view.  Imagine being the character and speaking this story out loud.  Share these monologues with your team so you get to know all the characters in the play.

Fourth: Now, imagine you are one of the spectators. Using pieces of the dialogue, the monologues, and the expressive details which you and your colleagues have already written, write a new version of the story describing the whole imaginary world you have been brainstorming. Tell this story out loud. When you converse the words of the characters, let yourself move and talk like them. Sometimes you will recount the details of the scenes that you can see in your mind's eye. Sometimes you may become the characters and feel what they are feeling. Let yourself be in the middle of the world of the story, describing to the listener what is happening all around you as if it were real.

Remember, imagining things is the most challenging task to learn. The imagination is like a muscle. The more we use it the quicker and stronger it gets. Don't be discouraged if at first you feel awkward. Keep trying and soon you'll be leaping and roaring. Just like bike riding, gymnastics, football, or any other skill, the more you do it, the better you get at doing it. Practice playing, and soon you'll see your storytelling skills growing.

Last, I wish you best of luck to become a professional story teller.

Understanding Mathematic Disability

By: Salima Moosa Sewani

Mathematics is one of the most interesting subjects during the academic year for some of the students. But in contrary to that, this fact can’t be denied that most of the students dislike mathematics. I, myself was one of such students during my school who disliked mathematics very much.     

In order to find the reasons behind these negative feelings towards mathematics, I researched at my Learning Center. After evaluating all of my students, the following were the main reasons which I found relevant and authentic:

• I dislike mathematics because it is too boring to spend time in solving sums.
• This subject is the most complicated one.
• I hate this subject because I never understand the methods to solve sums.
• I don’t know why mathematics was added in our curriculum. I hate it because I never found anything interesting in it.
• Mathematic wastes my time and energy because my end results are always 'nil' in maths.
• Teachers don’t know how to teach mathematics. They just use their own methods and formulae, which shoots up our mind.

According to the research, approximately 6% of school-age children have significant math deficiencies, and among students classified as learning disabled, arithmetic difficulties are as pervasive as reading problems. This does not mean that all reading disabilities are accompanied by arithmetic learning problems, but it does mean that math deficiencies are widespread and in need of equivalent attention and concern.

Parents and teachers should keep in mind that such students in their classes are not burdens for them. They also need your attention as well as the others do. If the child is not getting a concept, try to give them extra time to clear their concepts rather than failing them in an examination.

Recently, increased attention has focused on students who demonstrate challenges learning mathematics skills and concepts that are taught in school across the grade levels. Most of the parents, educators, and researchers are noticing that some students seem perplexed learning simple math skills that many take for granted. Disliking mathematics and problem learning the skills related to mathematics do not lie in a same plane.

If a person dislikes math, then a teacher can use different strategies to their level of interest, but if a person is continuously getting low grades in math, then this problem might indicate that he/she may have mathematic disability.

Fortunately, researchers are now paying their valuable attention to help students who struggle learning basic mathematics skills, mastering more advance mathematics (e.g., algebra), and solving math problems. Before learning any thing, we should know that what Math Disability is.

If a child has difficulty making sufficient school progress in mathematics similar to that of her peer group despite the implementation of effective teaching practices over time.

Or

If a child is not able to learn basic skills and concepts of math according to his/her age level, then a child is termed as “Math Disabled.”

Brain scans can also explain math problems in a child. In order to find Math Disability, the new research used scans of brain activity in the intraparietal sulcus - the area known to be involved in processing number information.

The scientific name for Math Disability is Dyscalculia. It means “a severe or complete inability to calculate”. Remember that the terms learning disabilities in mathematics, Math Disability and Dyscalculia are same.

People with Dyscalculia may have better than average language skills and be good at sciences, the creative arts and even some aspects of mathematics. But they tend to have difficulty visualizing number sequences and the passage of time.

Teachers, tutors, psychologists, master trainers, etc., can use different observant skills and testing to find out whether a child has Math Disability or not.

When a child is identified as having a math disability, his difficulty may stem from problems in one or more of the following areas:

**Memory

**Cognitive development

**Visual-spatial ability

Memory

Memory problem is one of the most common problems found among the school going children. Few of the students have a problem of memorizing things effectively, and they used to forget every thing in a short span of time. This problem may affect a child’s math performance in several ways.

A child might have memory problems that interfere with his ability to regain basic arithmetic facts quickly. In the upper grades, memory problems may influence a child’s ability to recall the steps needed to solve more difficult word problems and in solving algebraic equations, or to remember what specific symbols.

Cognitive Development

Students with a math disability may have trouble because of delays in cognitive development, which hinders learning and processing information. Such developmental problems may lead to the problem in understanding relationships between numbers, solving word problems, understanding number systems, etc.

Visual-Spatial

Visual-spatial problems may interfere with a child’s ability to perform math problems correctly. This may include place value sums, trouble in interpreting maps, misaligning numerals in columns for calculation, etc.

A learning disability in mathematics can be identified in the area of mathematics calculation (arithmetic) and/or mathematics problem solving. A child with a learning disability in math calculations may often struggle learning the basic skills in early math instruction where the problem is rooted in memory or cognitive difficulties. A learning disability in solving math word problems taps into other types of skills or processes.

What Can Be Done?

Here are some of the tips, which I feel are good enough to deal with challenging students:

Provide a lot of real calculating to ensure understanding takes place before moving into the abstract concepts.

When working on problem solving or word problems, provide opportunities to use real life situations or items to assist with visualization.

Teachers can also use different activities and worksheets to explain math sums to the students sequentially. Practical demonstration might also help a child to learn many skills in a much higher capacity.

Teacher/ counselor behavior should be normal with such children.

Separate curriculum should be designed with fewer burdens for such students in a class.

Provide opportunities to use 'pictures, words or graphs' to help with understanding.

Relate all problems to a real-life situation as much as possible.

Appreciate such students and always motivate them to say yes to every work.

Use different computer games and activities as well, which might create an interest in a child to learn and participate actively.

Arithmetic weakness/math talent

Some learning disabled students have an excellent grasp of math concepts, but are inconsistent in calculating. They are reliably unreliable at paying attention to the operational sign, at borrowing or carrying appropriately, and at sequencing the steps in complex operations. These same students also may experience difficulty mastering basic number facts. 

Interestingly, some of the students with these difficulties may be remedial math students during the elementary years when computational accuracy is heavily stressed, but can go on to join honors classes in higher math where their conceptual prowess is called for. Clearly, these students should not be tracked into low level secondary math classes where they will only continue to demonstrate these careless errors and inconsistent computational skills while being denied access to higher-level math of which they are capable. Because there is much more to mathematics than right-answer reliable calculating, it is important to access the broad scope of math abilities and not judge intelligence or understanding by observing only weak lower level skills. Often a delicate balance must be struck in working with learning disabled math students which include: 

• Acknowledging their computational weaknesses
• Maintaining persistent effort at strengthening inconsistent skills;
• Sharing a partnership with the student to develop self-monitoring systems and ingenious compensations; and at the same time, providing the full, enriched scope of math teaching
• The written symbol system and concrete materials

Math learning difficulties are common, significant, and worthy of serious instructional attention in both regular and special education classes. Students may respond to repeated failure with withdrawal of effort, lowered self-esteem, and avoidance behaviors. In addition, significant math deficits can have serious consequences on the management of everyday life as well as on job prospects and promotion. Therefore, it is the duty of a teacher to deal with such challenge effectively through their skills and knowledge.