By and large, teachers are a responsible lot. This is why they are always anxious about their students; so anxious that they often take on the responsibility of learning for them. For example, when marking essays, they strive to correct every single error in the piece. After that all the students have to do is to copy the teacher's words as corrections. Needless to say, students don't find corrections motivating because they are likely to be copying out the words without understanding and they don't have to do any thinking about the mistakes they've made.

It is hard to give up responsibility. I know that myself as a big sister and mother. But for the sake of our students and our loved ones, we need to take a step back so that they can take responsibility for their own learning.




February is month of love and I read Sumiko Tan's article about losing a 23 year old friendship. I can empathise because I too have been thinking about love and relationships. While reflecting on my year in 2006, I concluded that while I have made new friends and affirmed old friendships, some relationships have been, to quote Paul Simon, slip sliding away. Perhaps they have been slipping for a while but it seems that now they are fast disappearing into thin air. Sure, we do grow out of people and circumstances change but still I feel more than a tinge of regret about this state of affairs. Yet, another part of me feels like I should let these people go; why hang on? Chances are they might have outgrown me too. But on the other hand, many relationships go awry because we didn't make an effort to sustain them. Friendship and other relationships are time consuming matters; we need to work at keeping in touch, at asking after each other, at showing care and concern and at anticipating needs and wants. But surely they are worth working at and have I not been diligently tending to my garden of friends? But there's little point in apportioning blame. I think about these matters every now and then and with some unhappiness but life moves me on.