This essay is a retrospective glance over traditional lesson processes during author's schooling. It is now then compared to what is expected to be constructive lesson. It highlights on the paradigm shift of being teacher centered to learned centered. Author has also included few anecdotes to depict past experience of traditional lesson setting

1. Traditional and constructive Lesson (Sonam Wangchuk)
Traditional lesson is considered to be teacher centered with limited student participation. It just
involves transfer of information only without scope of providing higher thinking order activities.
In this view I conservatively confess the geography classes especially of the seventh standard to
be traditional. I still remember the lesson on the types of rocks in one of the classes where my
teacher went on reading and explaining. Teacher just gave the explanation as reflected in the
textbook. There, I could sense myself and other friends nearby wondering blankly, trying to digest
the meaning of new terms. Teacher explained that sedimentary rocks are formed because of
mechanical process where sediments are deposited to one another for a long period (thousands of
years). I still remember myself whispering to my desk mat, “what is the meaning of mechanical
process, sediments”, and wondered how rocks could be classified. At that moment my teacher saw
me and asked me a question. He asked, “What is a sedimentary rock?” At that moment I was not
even able to pronounce the terms mechanical and sedimentary correctly, forget about answering
correctly.
This badly deteriorated our teacher’s mood where he continued asking question to the whole class.
I clearly remember that many could not answer to his question. Students dozing out of boredom
without any active participation requirement was the regular routine for our geography lesson. The
only part we as learner had to undertake was making notes on our own after teaching which we
always copy past from few high achievers. There was no scope for us to explore and learn. We
also have to attend classes in fear as the teacher uses to ask questions if we tend to sleep or wander
our attention.
In contrast to the traditional experiences, I did experience few moments where we /I as students
payed major role. Lesson was on one of the chapters of GIVER by Lious Lowry, an English text
for class ten. There we were asked to play a short drama in small groups. Firstly we read the text
and tried to construct/make meaning of the information which we shared in our group. Then our
teacher approved the idea of each group with feedbacks, scaffolding and encouragement. So in
practicing the drama, each member in the group had a role to play. We had to take care of minute
details of our play because even to dress up we had to show that our custom was as per the text. In
doing so we could explore by asking seniors, other English teachers and looking out for drama
online. In enacting and preparing the drama it helped us to enhance our communication,
argumentation, and problem-solving skills. We independently could construct meaning of the
assigned work