Teaching is always a two way process . On inspiring people and getting inspired by them . For , i believe , if we just want to gain some knowledge a textbook is more than enough . There is no need of a trainer/teacher .
Being a night owl who can easily study into the wee hours of the night waking up in the early mornings was always a pain . But during one of the postings during MBBS by Professor Dr Joy Philip i was always excited to wake up early . For his classes inspired with the right amount of humour and the general enthusiasm for the subject . . MBBS was so vast but his classes we still remember even after decades because he used to inspire us and that helped learning the subject too . Even my entrepreneurial skills seeds also was not frowned upon as i had a small medical book business during MBBS. This teacher used to inspire whatever talent his students had .
Two weeks back i attended a lecture by Dr Anirudh Kohli a radiologist from mumbai . I had attended his lectures decades back when i was a postgraduate student in Radiodiagnosis . But, even now, his lectures inspire me . The passion shows in his lectures and the same topic still after decades makes me remember the main contents . Thats unusual because we attend many lectures over many years .
Inspiring is not limited to clinical subjects . Be it the kungfu teacher who inspires his student to fight like a shaolin monk or the guitar teacher who inspires his student to strum the guitar like a rockstar , inspiring is one of the important elements of teaching . And if you think online lectures can be uninspiring there too as long as a human being delivers a lecture in online courseware ( i have attended coursera and edx online courses ) the distinction between inspiring and uninspiring teachers are distinct .
Now , what about students inspiring teachers . As any teacher who interacts with students knows , students enable teachers to further advance in their knowledge . No class is complete without students questions and these enable teachers to explore new realms of the subject . No teacher knows the answer to all possible questions at any given instance but the inquisitive student pushes the teacher too to his limits of exploration . And lastly when training students of different backgrounds that also is additional inspiration to the teacher to think out of the box . I have taught students who are biomedical engineers , software engineers , radiologists and postgraduates . Each bring their own unique background to the class room .
Teaching like medical profession is not just another job .It involves real commitment and passion whatever be the subject . And frankly , if a teacher cannot say , his/her job is not inspiring people its better that he does something else . Did i inspire any of my students other than inspiring them to sleep in class ? Should wake them up and ask them next time :)
Lastly thanks for taking my blog and website to the 30000+ mark . Wishing you all a wonderful new year ahead
