For the Love of Teaching
Despite our profession being the base for all other professions in the world, teachers are perhaps the lowest paid among professions for the educated. Through my long career of 33 years, I have heard about teaching being the noblest profession so many times that I could scream in vexation. “Would you become one?” I ask some of those who make such statements. They begin blustering, or suddenly remember a previous engagement, and rush away. “Will you recommend it to your children?”, I ask, and the answer is the same.
I remember the time we had gone on strike a few years ago because our salaries had not been paid for a couple of months. A politician who had just taken his extended family and himself on a three-month-long vacation in Europe, on taxpayer’s money, had famously said, in righteous indignation, “All of them should be lined up and whipped!” His exact words, quoted verbatim.
But.
A teacher is remembered long after the student leaves the classroom and acquires his own life, and family. This is the only profession I know which forms the bedrock of a person’s existence. Students never forget no matter how advanced in years they get, that one teacher or that one lesson or piece of advice that turned their entire life around. More than any other profession in the world, kids remember the one teacher who helped set them on the right path. And teachers do this without expecting anything in return, or even thinking that they have made a mark in that child’s life.
I was ten years old when the headmistress of the Primary Section of the school, who also taught us English, took me aside and told me, “Suma, English should never be selfish. The ‘I’ should always come last.” I gazed at Mrs. Godinho, old, white-haired, slightly stout, in a knee-length dress in an aquamarine-sea-green shade, who was smiling benevolently at me. I had written something in class, and it had been fiercely rebellious and antisocial. I don’t remember what it was, but this is what she had said to me then, that of all the pronouns in a sentence, the ‘I’ should always be the last one. I shall never forget that piece of advice, or her, for as long as I live.
At the launch of my sixth book, “Have a Blessed Day,” students I had taught more than two decades ago, who had heard through social media or word of mouth, about it, walked in. My family members were there, too, and my husband who had been peacefully talking to someone turned around to see me being hugged by a strange man. He ambled over to investigate and see whether I needed rescuing. The man was not only hugging me, but also weeping copiously. My husband tapped the man on his shoulder, then blanched in horror, as the man turned around and started hugging him, still weeping. My husband extricated himself and looked at the person. “She’s my English teacher,” the man was sobbing, “She taught me twenty years ago.” He was so overcome, both of us had to jointly work to calm him down.
I was standing shivering at Jungfraujoch, while my husband, labouring under the sustained belief that he was the original Superman, cavorted in the snow. I didn’t remind him that he might probably come down with a cold the next day, because he knows everything, and dislikes anyone taking over that portfolio. It was then that I heard someone call my name, in a hushed tone. I turned around, and there was this girl, with a hand to her mouth, “Suma ma’am?” she asked again. ‘Yes, and you are Shireen” I said, and she ran over to give me a hug. “You remember my name!” “Of course,” I said.
And we do.
In the Park I walk in, a woman with a teenaged daughter came to talk to me, and give me a graphic account of how I had taught her the difference between the pronunciation of words with ‘v’, and ‘w’, and how it stood her in good stead in the corporate sector she works in.
Closer home, the man I live with tries hard not to look impressed when I mention, in passing, the etymology of words like ‘window’ and ‘daisy’, and how many words and languages owe their existence to strange theories called ‘The Ding Dong Theory’, the “Bow Wow Theory’ and the ‘Yo-he ho’ theory. He suspects I am having him on, but I am in full flow and he doesn’t know how to stop me.
And there it is, in a nutshell, as it were.
Teaching is probably the lowest paid profession, with the highest dividends. We put a smile on the faces of people even when they are no longer with us. We are remembered with love and affection, even when we are no longer of ‘use’ to the kids we taught. None of the jobs that pay millions in money and perks can boast of planting a lasting memory of love and security in the hearts of those they interact with, like a teacher can.
These last two years have probably taught everyone @the value of a teacher, and that a teacher doesn’t ‘just teach’. That there are parameters and shades of that teaching that cannot be replicated by anyone. That we tell stories that keep the memories of a generation, a race, a country, a people, alive. That when we come in to teach, we put on hold our regular lives for that part of the day, and return to it, later. That we are all mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, sons and daughters, too.
If I had my life to live all over again, would I reconsider my profession, which is my vocation and my passion? No. A captive audience, and being able to dress up in my best cotton and silk sarees, accessorised with matching earrings and kohl-lined eyes, and getting paid for hearing my own voice! What could be better? I know there is a school of thought that subscribes to the idea that teachers should not pay too much attention to what they look like, or wear: my mother in law deplored the attention I paid to the way I look, saying that teachers should not be so finicky about outward appearances.
But I wear my inside on my outside, and my outside on my inside. I always have. I always will. And if a teacher can’t teach one to be natural and true to oneself, by tenet and practice, what can she teach?
Stay lit.
Have a cheer-filled day.
I wish you a merry Christmas,
And a Happy New Year!
©️ 2021 Suma Narayan. All Rights Reserved.
Tagging some of my teacher-friends on Medium: Jane Frost (Jane Grows Garden Rooms), Dr. Preeti Singh, Neera Handa Dr, Warren Brown, Connie Song, Benjamin Freeland, Zay Pareltheon, Nathalie Clair, Zelda Kasahara, Anastasia Soul Gypsy. Could you please drop a word, a phrase, a line, a story on how teaching has impacted you?
And those whose names I have not taken, purely owing to my advancing age, and being more than usually scatter-brained and addle-pated, please do join in.
Thank you.
