To Teachers, With Love!

I was always a geek in school. Teacher's pet. My favorite teacher could have told me that the earth was flat and that Microsoft does no evil, I would have fought against the world to uphold her statements. My Dad often teased me that my answers for most questions began with, "My teacher said..." And I would close my ears and run away before anyone could counter what Ma'am said.

But I loved my teachers. I really did. Except when I was in Kindergarten. KG-D. I remember distinctly. I had passed Nursery with flying colors (and alphabets and fruits and whatever it is I was asked to name) and found myself in KG-D. The new class-teacher entered and I started crying. She looked scary to me, just because she was fat! I would cry every morning while taking the bus, "I don't want fat mam!". But relief came when the Nursery teacher would come, sit with me, make sure I was engrossed in coloring and then leave silently. I would have never passed KG had it not been for her!

 

Teachers have a way of looking out for students, especially when they are young. I remember not being very fond of my 2nd standard class teacher because she loved checking tiffin boxes at the end of lunch and I was in the weird phase of not wanting to eat food. How dare she worry about what I ate? Don't ask me why. I resorted to brilliant means such as transferring my entire lunch to my best friend's box when she wasn't looking. What I would give, to get back that home cooked food now!

Anyway, the point is, I hated her for a brief period, but I will never forget how warmly she hugged me when I went back to school after a bout of chicken pox and told my parents she missed me in her class.

 

Then there was that English teacher who could never stop yapping. I and atleast 30 batches of students before me, who studied under her owe her *so* much! Every year. Every single year, she would fall back on syllabus because she could never finish with her yapping and yet, she changed our lives, because she taught us conversational English! My favorite moment with her? When we were pouring into a Wren & Martin exercise on Subject-Verb agreement and she remarked,   "The Hippopotamus yawns with a large open mouth." The students were all looking for that sentence in the book but I was looking at her. She was of course, winking at me. :D

 

So many memories of good teachers! The History sir who, I think, soaked his clothes in perfume before coming to class, the Geography teacher who cracked all those typical jokes befitting a teacher of her subject (the likes of, open the door and let the climate in), the other Geography teacher who hated classrooms and taught us while running after rabits in the field. They made some efforts to make their classes interesting and knowingly or unknowingly, they got me interested.

 

I always thought it was the unambitious little girls who said, "I want to be a teacher when I grow up." How wrong was I? Its the most ambitious who say they want to be teachers when they grow up. Engineers will make products, architects will build buildings, doctors will treat diseases, MBAs will, umm, do nothing. But teachers? They make lives. They have the power to mould opinions, to influence minds at a transformational age, to make better human beings out of little munchkins and eventually, make the world a better place to live for engineers, architects, doctors and umm, MBAs.

 

So, here's wishing a happy teacher's day to all my teachers.

And also, pssst: Don't get scared by this, but I do plan to become a teacher some day. Maybe when I am 40, and I have done nothing everything that an MBA has to do. Till then though, I am a student!

 

 

Present, Ma'am!