Sunday, August 26, 2012

Learning through teaching


As usual, we had to face a different kind of challenge ……………This time it  was  health education. We had to educate children in an orphanage on a topic related to health. All the girls had 2 challenges , teaching  kids wearing  SAREEs.

We   divided ourselves in to 4 groups. Our subgroup got the girls of year  15-17 of age. So our main topic was healthy life under which we considered   physical, mental & social well being. So there were 4 subtopics .namely,  personal hygiene, how to do the day today  studies well  (how to prepare a short note in a effective way, memorizing and understanding,), leisure time activities ,personality & social interactions. Initially I did not take this programme  seriously,as we had to present in front of   a bunch of teen agers . Of course, we had lots of facts. But we realized th echallange was giving them our knowledgein a way they could understand . In fact , it had to be short and sweet. Then I thought our worries are  over. When we were  teaching them,  I understood that we should  hide our anxiety &   show them our  confidence in order to get their trust in return. Also it was  very hard to get all of their attention towards the speaker ,because of their playful  teen age.

Altogether it was a nice experience. I had to do the introduction. When I went in front of them , an unexpected thing happened.  (Well , my friends might guess this “unexpected thing” has to do something  with my saree ;) and Luckily i was not that much unlucky). All of a sudden, they stand up and greeted me. I really didn’t expect such a  behavior from them. I was really surprised . Also during the question session, they raised questions one after another,  surprising us.( however we  managed to give sensible answers to all of them).

@ the beginning I asked my self, why this health education thing? Is this something useless?????????????? Now adays doctors play a major role in preventive health in addition to, the classical role of a Doctor, curing and treating the patient. For both purposes they educate the public which is called “public health education”. So as medical students, its important for us to know how to deliver a speech containing health information  in an understandable way to the public.

Madhushi Nanayakara
Post no 2 .

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