In my all girls class four of the students wear niqab or veil. Teaching the veiled students was a difficult task for me. I establish eye contact with every student while teaching but I find it difficult to establsih eye contact with girls wearing veils because I thought it might offend them. However without eye contact I found it impossible to teach so I slowly started establsihing eye contact with them. The result was an improved level of communication. Veil ceased to be a formidable barrier as I started focusing on the non-verbal aspects of voice to compensate for the loss of facial gestures that are so important to know the level of comprehension of students.
I haven't seen the faces of my veiled students but in my imagination each student has a face that may not correspond to the actual face but that face smiles, questions, concentrate and performs all the gestures while I teach. I determine the obscure facial expressions of the students through the tone and pitch of their voice and their body language. Those who cannot see with eyes have thousand other ways to appreciate the beauty of world, so if facial expressions are missing there are ample ways to communicate effectively with veiled students.
7 comments:
Heyy...how have you been doing...was going through my archives and saw your comments...thought I will drop by and say hi...yeah..and your definitely right...people who can not see...appreciate beauty in other ways...yep...completely true...laters
WOW...am amazed to read this. So true communication becomes so easier with an eye contact... and I often wondered gals with veil loose that aspect and I felt bad that they were never given that feeling..>!
You are a nice teacher thats all I can say :)
Keep up the good job dear
Cheers
Im following no ones steps
dont u think remember me...but what the hey...nice to see u still bloggin!
Fascinating. It is so true though, there are so many different levels of communication. Your determination to find effective communication with veiled students demonstrates your committment to education. Awesome.
hey! wb! sorry ive been tied up myself. good to see u around again sp on my blog.
regards!
This is fascinating to me. My father is a university professor, and I have taught both English and Portuguese private lessons. I am very dependent on facial expressions to determine whether students comprehend, like you said. I want to ask my father what his experiences have been like, because he has worked with lots of hearing and sight impaired students. I'm sure he is much more in tune with subtle, non-visual or non-verbal signs like you describe.
What specific areas do you teach? I'm curious. :)
@ NO one: welcome back to my blog.
@Dawn: Thanks.
@nadia: I ofcourse remember you. you were among the very first bloggers who commented on my posts.
Brea: I am glad to see your coments. Communication is a highly complex yet fascinating subject to study and apply.
@Psyched: Thanks for dropping by.
@Ali: I teach business subjects for BBA and MBA classes. My area of interests are economics, communication and management.
Teaching is establishing a unique, and personal link with each student.Understanding Non verbal communication is the key for just doing that.
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