Dr Guraraj Karajagi, Chairman, Academy for Creative Teaching (ACT), unfurled leaves from his own experience to demonstrate how individual teachers can transform society. The teachers also received an overview of Karnataka’s eminent artists and their work from art consultant and teacher Veena Kotian Thimmaiah. “I’d like to open your eyes to art so that you can do the same to your students,” she said.
Earlier, about one hundred student-members of Deccan Herald in Education (DHiE) programme received prizes they won in DHiE music, dance, painting and story writing competitions conducted throughout the year.
Karajagi commended the Japanese mentoring method to induce change. Each teacher should serve as mentor to a handful of students and interact with counsellors to mould students, he said. The child “is the most important instrument in our hands” to transform society. “If you do it in a small way in your school, the whole community can be converted,” he explained. With delightful play-acting, he demonstrated how students do what the teacher does, more readily than what the teacher says.
Therefore, “To be good teachers, we must be good human beings,” he said.
Veena Thimmaiah traced the path that art has travelled in Karnataka from the patriarch K Venkatappa to today’s young artists. “Encourage students to express themselves instead of asking them to draw sceneries,” she urged the teachers.
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