Sunday, October 12, 2008

What am I doing?

I am happy after the first week in the new institute I joined. I have always wondered, whether my inputs are making a difference to the students. When I teach Organization THeory & Design, I have come some evidence immediately of the impact it has on the students. The real impact would be visible and appreciable only when the students reach senior positions. When I teach 'Discovering Self' the evidence is much more obvious. But the number of students I can cover is limited because of the model.
I wanted to scale up, reach more students, especially those who dont have access to good support. Ironically the best teachers are available only in the best institutions, where in my opinion the students can work by themselves a lot. It is the weaker students who need more support and the skills they acquire will make a huge difference in their life and career. I am happy now that I am making a difference to students who need support more.

I am also with a dilemma, if I reach the students of the top institutions, the snow ball effect would be much more. Really? I am not sure. I always believed that those who dont have access to information and social support for education will achieve great things if provided with support. I am not sure the percentage of students who come from backgrounds of information assymetry and lack of social support. May be most of them are from urban upper class backgrounds and are just left out of the rat race. Is it worth while? I am sure the students would gain a lot from me. But I am wondering whether it is really achieving my objective.