Following a traffic accident, when the other party, unable to get their way, though they were at fault, lodged a "case" against me with the police. When I was told that, I was scared. I didn't know that the trauma of incarceration in Qatar had also engendered another feeling: fear of police cases and the the police.
A few heart-warming messages from Qatar Academy and a very surprising communication from the student whose father got me fired from my job and incarcerated.
Nepali society struggles to make social progress for a number of different reasons. One of the reasons is that we have a number of social stigmas and many subjects and issues are taboo. In other words, most Nepalis live in denial of many issues plaguing the society. Here are a number of those stigmas and taboo subjects.
The first step to addressing them is to admit to the fact that they are issues. Then we can have honest conversations and discourses about them and find solutions for them.
Pretty much every Nepali school textbook I have seen and read about, I have decided, actually hinders children's learning, forget promote -- and contribute to -- them! In this blog post, I show how a fifth grade textbook completely misses the mark.
The solution? Do away with the local and national level examinations in grades 8 and 10 and eliminate textbooks.
Children want to impress and please adults they look up to, whether the adults are family members, teachers, or members of their local community. As a teacher, if you have high expectations of your students, by and large, they will do everything they can to meet those expectations, partly to impress and please you.
This is a very feel-good story of a former student of mine who, as a HL IB Chemistry student, rose up to meet my expectations, succeeded AND went on to do a PhD in Chemistry at Oxford in the UK.