21st Century Teacher
Teachers are the real builders of the nation. They are the pillars to uphold the national aspirations of progress. The teachers’ role in the growth, development and prosperity of the nation is undeniable. It is the teachers who mould the future society and influence the coming generations towards successful achievement of the national goals. If the teachers have to perform their duties with dedication and sincerity they must possess adequate mental health.
Everywhere I found that teachers are over burdened with different tasks at school level. They felt embarrassing situation to handle multitasks on same day and date. In fact, we are aware that in private organization, there are several factors which affect teachers’ personal as well as public life. Every day they have to perform same or other tasks i.e. syllabus completion, notebook correction, examination, discipline, completion of CCE Register as well as obeying boss meaningless order on daily basis.
Yoga and Meditation
School teachers develop schemes of work and lesson plans in line with curriculum objectives. They facilitate learning by establishing a relationship with pupils and by their organization of learning resources and the classroom learning environment. School teachers develop and foster the appropriate skills and social abilities to enable the optimum development of children, according to age, ability and aptitude. They assess and record progress and prepare pupils for the exams. They link pupils’ knowledge to earlier learning and develop ways to encourage it further, and challenge and inspire pupils to help them deepen their knowledge and understanding. In nutshell, I can say that teachers have to participate actively in “Scholastic and Co-scholastic Activity” on daily basis. Parents pose a difficult challenges before the teachers to develop their kids as hero of the society despite the students are cooperative or non cooperative. Teachers have really tough time.
Happy Teachers Happy Classrooms
Teacher cannot escape from performing their expected tasks. In fact in private organization boss knows only two words “Tasks and Output” like chanting mantras of God. There are no other remedies to save or avoid from the institutional expectation within a time frame. So teachers always feel stress to handle these situations smartly; most of the teachers are facing problems all around, starting from family, foe and friend, wife, husband and career growth so and so forth. Due to excessive stress teachers feel pity on them and become of the victim of the society and the organizations.
A mentally healthy teacher is one who has confidence in himself and his pupils, one who expects much and gets much, one who is concerned for the future citizens of India. Teachers are expected to be mentally healthy but the problems of teachers are more than what it was in the past. In addition to the loss of special recognition, the profession has been infested with a number of other problems, such as enormous rise in the work load, lack of security of service, too much domination by the political bosses under local board managements, growing indiscipline among the students, delayed promotions and poor school climate.
The teacher has to cope with so many stressful and frustrating situations which results in mental ill health. A teacher, who is not mentally happy, will breed discontentment and dissatisfaction which will have a long term effect on the pupils. Therefore, mental health of teachers is a crucial issue to be tackled by educationists and all those concerned with the teaching profession.
Yoga and meditation practice have a highly positive impact in the management of stress related problems. The strong need is that the various aspects of yoga may suitably be embraced as a part of regular training particularly among the teachers. Yoga and meditation have long lasting impact on human mind. Teacher needs to adopt Yoga and Meditation in daily life. I do not think that we should do it very intensively but we should do it regularly.
We should develop a habit of doing it without thinking too much. We can start our day with walking a mile in the lap of nature and practicing “Surya Namskar” regularly at a corner of our home. It will surely bring a massive change into a person life. We can practice “Anulom-Vilom”; whenever we have time to do it. Practicing of yoga and meditation is most crucial factor, because everyone is thinking to practice it but a few people makes it happen, that makes a big difference in a person’s life.
I firmly believe that in this modern era of anxiety and high expectation to perform the best in this industrialized and materialistic global world. Yoga and Mediation play vital role to heal out individual’s stress. Modern world counts each and every moment of individual’s performance and contribution to a particular organization. People feel so much stress in day to day life. They feel insecurity on daily basis. Meditation and Yoga help individual to come up with the problem as well as prepare an individual to live healthy, happy and prosperous life.
Rajeev Ranjan
Indian Educationist
Reference:
- Bhavanani, Ananda, Balyogi. (2007). Yoga and Stress. Yoga Vigyana. MDNIY, 1, 1, 9-6
- Cranwell, Ward & Alyssa, Abbey. J., (2005). Organizational Stress. Palgrave. Macmillan, New York-10010, USA
- Health and Safety Executive (2004). Management Standards for Tackling Work-related Stress, www.hse.gov.uk/stress/standards.
- Sharon, Staffy (2007) The Healing Effect of Yoga in PTSD
- Vaze, D.R., Lt. Col. (2007). Yoga for Stress Management, Souvenir, National Yoga Week- 2007. Morarji Desai National Institute of Yoga: 106-109.
- Snyder C.R. (2001) Coping With Stress: Effective People and Process, OU , NY
- Introduction To Stress Management http://www.noah-health.org/english/illness/men-
- Simple Things You Can Do Today to Control Stress
http://stress.about.com/library/weekly/aa112600a.htm - Paula’s Story
- Effect of Meditation (Research Paper ) by ICMR
- Research Paper (Dr. A Malathy)
- Stress Management after Disaster by Marta Stuart