My champions!

Who was your most influential teacher? Why?

I was raised with the belief that the school is our home away from home. I studied in a convent school and during the late 1980’s and early 1990s, my school was one of the best schools in the locality. We often moved homes, but my school remained the central anchor. I don’t remember a lot about school, or how I fared as a student or even what my teachers perception of me was. The older siblings had left a mark, and I was constantly hauled up to live up to their expectations. And once they moved schools, I was the older one, and had to ensure there was something for the younger one to be hauled up for. this aspect of my education is something I have ensured remained so the younger one was always hauled up.

My first introduction to a teacher was a Nun, Sr D. She was a brilliant matronly woman who had the unique talent to identify the perfect student for all the roles for the Christmas play our school used to host. That year, while the ‘not an audition’ happened in the class, we were encouraged to pick up instruments to learn. I was the only one that picked the drum. Those days, I was scrawny, but, I had a classmate M who was even more petite than I was. And Sr D felt she would be the perfect ‘drummer boy’, so although I was the first one at the drums, M became the drummer boy for the play. I got the triangle to provide rhythm, and to date, I have no idea how or why the instrument is used. But that was Sr D.

Siblings used to go to the convent on the weekends to learn to play the guitar, and she used to take us to the gazebo in the convent to practice. While I did not learn to play the instrument, I loved sitting around Sr. D and listening to her voice. She had a whisper-soft voice and used to be able to command an entire class of toddlers to silence with just her presence. Sr. D, the calm. And then there was Sr. P- the storm. She ran the school office with her iron will. She was the polar opposite to Sr D. I have been hauled to the principal’s office every time the sibling forgot to get the leave note signed by the parents and had to always deal with Sr P. She also hauled me up often to remind Mum to pay the school fees which were sometimes late. Visiting Sr P was painful and I dealt with it like a martyr. (Woe is me!). But they were the first teachers in my life and were examples of the kind of person I would hope to be someday.  

A good teacher is like a candle- it consumes itself to light the way for others.

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk

Middle school was a lot of fun. Grade 3 we had Tr M who used to teach us English and Math. And the English class used to follow the PE/PT classes. So we used to come in sweaty and tired and had to sit and read stories and answer comprehension questions. On one such day, I came in and was super tired. I remember I fell asleep on the desk. Tr.M voice lulled me to sleep and no amount of nudging got me up. Eventually, the teacher came and stood next to me, shook me, and when I woke up confused, she smiled and said, “It’s good to have you back in class and awake!” I’ve never really lived out the trauma of being woken up and the tittering of my classmates at the humor of that situation. When I told Dad that I had been caught napping in class, he asked me the teacher’s name. Dad loved music. We were the first ones to get a radio, a TV, a Refrigerator, an LP, and a Tape Recorder on the street. There was always something playing in the house. And Harry Belafonte and Boney M were a couple of tracks Dad usually played around the house. So, when he heard her name, he played, “Matilda” by Harry Belafonte. I had no idea what he was singing about, but, the tune always played in my head during the English lessons.

Then there was Tr M, our PE teacher and my Kannada teacher. I used to be terrified of her, and tbh, I still am. I never got punished in class for not doing my homework or messing up my Kannada grammar. Dad had studied in a Kannada medium school, so his proficiency in the language ensured that he was able to not just guide and correct us, but also guide the teachers. I remember when tr M used to correct my notebooks, there was never a, “Why did you make such a silly mistake?”, it was always, “Your father is a Kannada pandita (has exceptional proficiency) and you as his child cannot let him down with these silly mistakes”. This one line would make me rush through my paper so I had enough time to review and correct any mistake I may have made.

Grade 5 I had Tr. K. Statuesque. Dignified. These are the words that come to mind when I think of her. And this is what I thought of her even then, in grade 5 when I had no idea what those words even meant. She had beautiful penmanship skills (handwriting), on the chalkboard and in our notes. We loved to go to her table to collect our books, and all she had to do was frown and the entire class would go silent. Extremely soft-spoken, she is easily one of my favorite teachers. I never prayed as much as I did in the grade 4 vacations, hoping to be assigned as a student to her class. I remember the day, when the younger sibling had missed the previous day because of illness and had come to school with me, only to find that the entire primary school had been given a holiday that day. She was bored and since I had class and she did not, I had left her in the school playground and told her to wait for me there. Then Tr K came in and, “A small child is sitting alone on the merry-go-round in the playground, does anyone have any idea who the child is?” I was always under the radar while in class, so this query placed me right in the middle of her crosshairs. I was expecting to be reprimanded, but all she did was smile and tell me to bring her into the classroom, explaining that she was too little to be sitting by herself outside. And noting our discomfort (I was embarrassed my sibling had to sit in my class, and sibling was bored to be forced to sit in my class), she also said, “How lucky is she, she’s coming into grade 5 without even passing the grade 3 or 4 exams!” I was so relieved then and fell a little more in love with this amazing teacher. She never gave the sibling a chance to get bored that day, sibling was the Teachers assistant, she collected books, distributed books, walked to the teachers’ room, and sat with the other teachers until the end of that day.

My teachers have been my heroes. People I have always mimicked and followed. But my favorite ones influenced me subconsciously. I’ve worked very hard at being patient, at ensuring that my students always had access to the “correct” information and that I had answers to their queries and if not, the humility to accept my lack.

Around the same time there was Tr M, our Biology and SUPW (crafts) teacher. Every year, she used to challenge us with a new project. I learned fabric painting, made wall hangings, and created embroidered tablecloths – rather, Mum learned all of these things on a rapidly accelerated curve because I used to forget to tell her in advance and usually only remembered the evening before submissions. Tr M was an avid reader, she always carried her story books to the SUPW classes and waited for us to work on our projects while she finished her book. That year, she was reading Robin Cook’s Coma and when we begged her for a free class, she offered to read this book for us. This was our first Robin Cook, our first audio book, our first medical mystery. Until this time, our access to books had been limited to the comics we used to exchange and read, so reading an ‘adult’ book, had us hooked. An exceptional artist, her diagrams both on the chalkboard while she explained something to us in class and the notes, when she corrected our mistakes – were examples of pencil sketching and shading techniques. That year, thanks to her, my diagram of the digestive system of the cockroach was a masterpiece and a neighbour who was studying engineering at that time requested that I do the diagrams in his notebooks.

Grade 6 we were introduced to the Wren and Martin. Tr C had taught the sibling types of clauses and the sibling had aced it. I hated it. But, being the younger one, I did not have the option to hate something so simple. And this mental block ensured that I had to work extra hard to just get through her classes. She never gave us the option to quit. That word did not belong in her dictionary. So we all had to plod through the exercises in the Wren and Martin. And while I hated her classes then, it was only a few years later I realized the importance of what she had done for us. But Tr C had patiently worked through the entire book to ensure our grammar was always on point.  

Around this time, Sr MS was our principal and she is one of the most awe-inspiring nuns I have ever had the pleasure of interacting with. She was fair, even when I was hauled to her office for forging Mum’s signature through the year for the younger sibling on all her leave notes. She taught me the meaning of disappointment. My actions had disappointed her and she made her displeasure known, but did not punish me. Instead, she changed the rules in the school to provide students with a grace period during which the leave notes could be submitted and acts like sending kids home to get notes signed the same day were discontinued. School elections and student activities in the years that Sr MS was principal were memorable. She defined ‘spirit’, she was part of everything the school did, she sang for us during the Children’s day events and even donned costumes above her habit to dance on the stage for us, she was our Santa Claus, she was our carnival mascot for some part of the fundraising our school did during the carnival. She was the essence of that office and when she moved on to her next role, that office room never felt the same.

Grade 7 I met Tr L. She had taught the sibling math and she was teaching us Kannada. As against my earlier teacher, Tr M for this language, Tr L ran a very comfortable class. She was petite and we were all hormonal adolescents going through various stages of growth spurts towering over her. Yet, she never disrespected us or insulted our abilities. She was polite yet firm and she insisted that ”You use language to communicate, so you cannot afford to be ambivalent in your communication. You have to say what you mean and mean what you say. There can be no confusion.” And when you are forced to stand up to what you have said, you learn to use words judiciously. This was the year I learned the importance of words and the significance of their meaning in various situations.        

“Teachers who love teaching, teach children to love learning.”

Unknown

These were the women who were my role models and inspired me to do better. While I was always taught to ‘never judge a book by its cover’, at some point during my graduate studies I realised the importance of that cover. I’ve always admired the confidence of a person standing on a dais with a captive audience. And it was only while I was in college realized how important looking good, smelling good, and talking smart was in the real world.

All my undergraduate professors were women, (Yes I continued my education in a convent,) and they were poised- extremely well-read women. Their makeup at any point in the day was spot-on and their clothes were elegant. Most of them draped a Sari to class and they were perfectly accessorised. These women were charismatic, commanding a room as soon as they walked in. Our under-grad classes easily accommodated 100-150 students and these lecturers ensured they had the attention of every one of those 100-odd students in their class. Taking notes in rapt attention, we were the students visualized by Pink Floyd in the song, ‘Another brick in the wall’. Hypnotic, captivating, charismatic, mesmerizing. These are the words that come to mind, when I think of my teachers from my undergraduate and graduate courses.

Everyone who remembers his own education remembers teachers, not methods and techniques. The teacher is the heart of the educational system.

Sidney Hook

And finally, I finished my graduation and stumbled into my postgraduation in a different state. This is where I met my first and only male faculty, Mr JP, a guest lecturer walking us through the paces of good journalism. He walked the talk 99% of the time and for the balance 1% he chain-smoked- definitely nothing we could or should imitate. Incidentally, this was an all-girls college, and I was in an all-girls class, (you guessed it, another convent) with a couple of male faculty members.  

A teacher’s job is to take a bunch of live wires and see that they are well-grounded.

Darwin D Martin

Mr JP allocated us beats and pushed us to explore and write meaningful stories. He never expected us to do something he would not do as a practicing journalist. He was working at making a difference one person at a time. Every one of us was in this course for a different reason and it was his mission to ensure that even if we did not become active journalists, we would be educated women. Women who would not accept a rule or directive blindly, but women who would question an injustice and work at rectifying it.

Great teachers empathize with kids, respect them, and believe that each one has something special that can be built upon.”  

Ann Lieberman

And that is what all these teachers in my life believed in. This is what my Mum believed in, when she was a tuition teacher. This is what the siblings believed in, when they walked me through the paces just before my exams (History, Grade X and Psychology Practical’s). These teachers, all of them, empathized with me and believed in my abilities as inconspicuous as it was and it was their hope and hard work that gets me to sit here and write this heartfelt acknowledgment of their efforts and assistance although sometimes this was disguised as a knock on my skull or a kick in my keister. Much deserved, I’d say.