Skip to main content

Great Teachers

I want to inspire people. Now you may think 'who's this little kid saying that big word?'. But I have a reason to want to inspire people. It's because I have been inspired by a few. I have been to four different schools since I first joined the crèche at Mary Nilayam and have been taught by a great many teachers or rather many great teachers. And when I left each school some of the people who left a lasting impression on me were my teachers.

I was one of the average kids in the class since grade 8 at my old school - Indian School Al Ghubra - in Muscat. And definitely did not belong to any cliques and ‘popular gangs’. I was just another kid. Yet I still got those “good work”, “excellent” and “keep it up” remarks whenever I submitted an assignment or scored well in a test. I don’t know if the teacher meant any of it or if it was part of the protocol whenever a student did well. Either way those remarks produced the effect it was meant to have. It meant encouragement from the part of the teacher. He has faith in you that you can do well. I scarcely realized how important those few words were till I no longer saw them or even heard them. When I joined school here I couldn’t help but notice that some people just can’t bring themselves to appreciate someone else’s work. Instead they pounce on the winner for a treat without a word of congratulation. On the other hand if one misses a step, there hardly is anyone to encourage or give him confidence. The poor guy is pushed down, mocked at, kicked to the curb and becomes everyone’s favourite victim of criticism when what the person actually needs is someone to believe in him. Maybe this sort of thing is quite normal here but I can’t help contrasting it with the ways I was used to.

Mr. Oze was the Head of the Department of Mathematics some years back at ISG. The man is one of the greatest teachers I have met though he never actually taught me. He was my sister’s teacher. My sister had been consistently hitting 50s and 60s just managing to scrape through. Once she came home happy to show my mother a “good” in her math assignment. That was just the spark she needed. From then on Oze would make her do worksheet after worksheet and she too felt no hesitation asking him questions. In the end when the board results were out she scored a shiny 96 in math. When she met him later Oze peered over his glasses and gave a wise but kindly smile and said,” What happened to those 4 marks?”

Mr. Oze wasn’t the only inspiration. There were other teachers as well who could inspire children effortlessly. Mrs Ipsita Biswas was one of them. She was one of the most efficient teachers in the school, always ready with solutions and alternatives to all kinds of crisis and she taught us all the manners we would need in our lifetime. Mrs. Ariwala spoke so glowingly of economics but could never manage to bore us. Mr. Sagayaraj, my French teacher, is a self made person which itself inspired me to do things without depending on others too much.  Dr. Dogra, an epitome of ideas and thoughts, though few understood what he was trying to say, was one of my favourite teachers because if you actually listened to him you would know he was making a lot of sense.

These teachers, they taught us things that no textbook could. Many of them are role models though I doubt they know it. I was a bit disappointed when I noticed that, here, all one wants to do is finish the portion and walk out of class. I may be wrong but this is plainly my opinion. There is absolutely no interaction. It’s just the teacher, the students and the books in their most material form.  What I’m trying to say is that children need to be inspired and encouraged not just to do well in the exams but to do well in life, to be good human beings. Sadly, such ideas are almost extinct among students as well as teachers today.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

eugene

Somehow I feel he must be called Eugene. :P

The Dream Lender

Image courtesy : www.josephinewall.co.uk Dreams are a wonderful gift The light, cushioned sensation, as we sink into bed and gently begin to fall and then awaken to new world so real yet so magical, is indeed wonderful!  Sadly I don't have dreams so often, nightmares too evade me most times.And I begin to think it's something wrong with me- maybe I'm not creative in my active mind,maybe I'm much too a realist. Maybe I'm not in sync with my environment and am probably a mere juxtaposition in such a happening world and have numbed senses. Or maybe I'm a heavy sleeper.  Unfortunate really, when I hear of highly animated fantasy-like  dreams of others. My sister is most blessed with such midnight matinees. The weird, the wicked and the heroic seize her unconscious world and spin full length fairy tales , some of them really scary too,adorned with elaborate detail. Whether it is her charming narration or simply my longing for such dreams it's tremendously...

hUMBLE sTROKES

iT''s been some time since I picked up a brush. Not the most impressionist, but for the love of oil pastels,here is a ballroom couple!  Tried to stick to Red,Blue and White in this one. Intended to be Katrina Kaif but turned out a hybrid of Katrina and Penelope? or some man? Originally a pencil sketch that the scanner cast a spell on. So this is what you get.