Being a teacher

 Being a teacher is indeed fun. You feel so fulfilled when a student calls you up from a foreign land just to let you know that he is indeed doing real well, and thanks you profusely and genuinely from the heart just for helping him along. The tone is confident, friendly, and you feel great witnessing a growth you encouraged.

Then there is this student who includes you both in her happiest moments and when she is deep down in doldrums just because she could not clear one minor interview or some entrance exam. You feel her tears even across the plastic and metal mobile. You feel with her, for her as if you are her best friend, her closest relative. You console her, do everything in your capacity to cheer her, encourage her, and, voila, a year or so later, the same sensitive girl is bubbling with enthusiasm and happiness that all is now  well, in fact, great. The deep satisfaction you feel is priceless.

Indeed being a teacher is great. It teaches you a lot. You are constantly learning how to teach better, for example, especially when in front of you are committed, genuine, intelligent minds eager to grow. You learn to empathise more and more. Their energy, their enthusiasm are eternally contagious, too.

It is indeed wonderful when you teach them literature. I have seen real crooks, manipulation master students confessing to me how Hardy's "Jude, the Obscure" moved them deeply, especially because I had related the narrative to our own immediate contexts.

 Students whom you have taught  fiction,  poems, plays passionately seem to remember you forever. Even when they might have bunked a lecture or two, they would later tell you most nostalgically how they loved the lectures, the discussions, and how they never met a teacher better than you. Each time there is an academic problem to face, or, at times, even when a personal irritating issue bothers them, they remember you. The now real grown up students,whom you meet after a decade or so, touching your feet in public places or on a busy road is sure a little awkward, but pleasant, too.

Special are students indeed when, despite their tight busy schedule, they are willing to participate in any cultural and/or literary activity just because it is your brain wave. No wonder, the Language Lab programmes, the film shows, film making small little workshops one arranged have capacity full audience ready to contribute every which way. 

Literature students would even attend non credit courses just because you are teaching them. Every activity, be it a wall magazine or a small little seminar, brims over with genuine creativity and fascinating imagination. Being a teacher is indeed great fun!

Pratima@Teachers plant seeds of development that forever grow.