Student Lenses

I started teaching at the Tata-Dhan Academy in the third term of the seventh batch of students undergoing the PDM—the Programme in Development Management. During that term, I taught a class in writing and another course in spoken communication, and it was very exciting for me to be back in the classroom again after more than a year without teaching. I knew, of course, that this classroom experience was only a fraction of what makes learning at the Academy interesting, but had not yet had much of a chance to see what the students really did in the field. I also knew that although I could teach English well, I did not really know much about what happened in the field beyond what I had read in a handful of student reports or heard about in student presentations. So, at the end of August in 2007, with my knowledgeable mentor and guide, Sangeetha, I got my first real chance to let the roles of student and teacher change, and have my students teach me about their field locations during my visits to them in the field.

Filed under: Development Practice Segment, PDM 8, DPS 1, PDM 8, photos