Time lines.....what?!!

First timeline.....
What happened in the second half of the PPSE course -
We analysed Krishna Kumar's article. We started on the threaded discussion boards
We discussed future assignments. Worked on the second day on our assignment of how to contextualise content that slips away from content and it was an awesome team effort by Bala, Anitha, Raji, Hema and yours truly. We got an A. Yay!!!!

Timeline of teaching-learning practice , as an amateur and professional.

My first amteurish attempt at teaching was explaining to friends the meanings of poems, because of my feel for Literature. We used to call it combined or group study, not "collaborative learning," in those days.

My first interesting teaching assignment was at the Institute of English, Keral Univ., while I was doing my research on Samuel Beckett. I had to teach Waiting for Godot to the post-graduates at the behest of my guide who also happened to be the HOD. It went off well ,to my pleasant surprise! I was teaching my juniors!!!

Then I taught for eleven months in Arts College for Women , Alwaye, a private tutorial(parallel) college. I had to teach general English in pre-degree classes and English literature and language in B.A. and M.A. classes. The context was interesting. My students insisted on speaking Malayalam with a kind of rustic and beautiful twang to it. Many were from the middle, lower middle and poorer classes in terms of economics. Quite a few were Muslims and came to class veiled and sometimes in black. They were all girls., of course :)
Their knowledge of English was suspect.
I had to read texts to them line by line, annotate everything, write the notes myself and make them copy it out by hand as I dictated it in class.
This kind of work ensured I knew the text well, but they "mugged up "everything. They were very respectful and loving but in class they had to be kept totally in control. A must was that they had to somehow pass. Institutions like that depend on results because the next batches come around based on advertisements or word of mouth or hearsay and failure meant closure of the institution. But , in spite of whatever drawbacks were there, I enjoyed my work thoroughly and became very popular with "my" girls. Most of them passed and some of them went on to B.Ed and should be even teaching now. One of them, a very sincere girl called Sindhu, who liked me a lot and did her work with all her heart got in as a teacher there after I left. That, I felt, was a feather in my cap.
At the time I knew nothing about pedagogy, except self-taught thumb rules. I couldn't use my "heavy" knowledge in a place like that but had to keep it simple. That was the main rule , keep it simple, discipline be maintained , content be made clear and keeping the context in mind teach from the exam point of view and encourage rote learning after analysing the question papers for them and trying to predict which questions would come :).
Though I was paid what by my present standards is a pittance , needless to say I was happy in my first teaching job. It was the satisfaction I got from seeing these girls coming from slightly backward areas and backgrounds become interested in studying and literature and beginning to read and write in English somewhat fluently that made me quite happy. Their love and humility also touched me deeply. Even the ones who perhaps failed were not likely to blame the teacher, in places like that. Yes, all in all I still treasure that time lots. Can't measure it's value, it was a very significant time and made a big contribution to me inside.