The Hope of a New Geography Teacher.

Kids are smart, they just need us to facilitate their learning. Once they got the hang of it, they will explore knowledge on their own. The role of the teachers? Facilitate. Assist.

****************************************************

Yesterday I had Human Geography class with one group. We discussed on the effects of population growth. I was glad four out of seven students did their homework which made discussion smoother.

Today, during Human Geography class with the other group, we discussed on the same topic as yesterday's group. Those on the board (as seen in the picture above) were written down by students. At first some hesitated to share their points. Alhamdulillah, by the end of the class, 10 out of 12 students wrote a point on the whiteboard. We then discussed those points whether they are relevant and how are they connected to the effect of population growth. Then we started putting numbers to each point to indicate relationship of one point to the other.

Guess what? We did not and hopefully, will not, cling on to only one textbook as knowledge is too wide it would be such a waste not to explore knowledge in all those books available out there and for today's class, I did not give them any note on the topic yet. I did give the other class some notes to copy down after we did some discussion on the topic. Though they learnt the same topic, our discussions vary, which led to different kinds of assignment; the first group had to write about the differences between their points on the effects of population growth to the points that I gave them in their note, and the second group had to write about two ways to overcome the negative effects of population growth.

I am hoping by the end of the semester, my students would become a bunch of people who got excited over the chance of getting more knowledge and wish to seek more even without the teacher asking them to do so.

May Allah ease our way and help us fulfilling our hope for the Ummah.