Happy Teachers' Day!

Can you imagine life without our teachers?

Ok, wait! Let me rephrase it. You needn’t imagine anything like that as each and every one of us is truly blessed with wonderful teachers in our lives. Learning would have been quite nasty without our lovely teachers.

Let us take a moment to look back.

Remember the valuable lessons of the pre-kindergarten days and those nursery rhymes? We still love to recite them in the familiar and unforgettable tune, don’t we?

The learning of the alphabet system was one of the most compelling ones! Don’t you want to relive those ‘A for Apple, B for Ball’ days?

Then, came the game of numbers and calculations. One two’s are two, one three’s are three, one four’s are four! Well, it did give me goosebumps!

And who can forget those English Grammar classes. Nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives! Now, it seems every adjective is too scant to describe our incredible teachers!

Sports and fitness were meant to be an important part of a child’s health. With our games teachers, these sessions became more than just our health benefits.

And I would be guilty if I don’t mention our drawing classes as well. Creativity of a child can be measured through a pencil’s ability to draw the imaginative mind.

The involvement of teachers in each step has made this chapter of learning in our lives an entirely momentous and notable thing to commemorate!

Apart from these, how can we forget lessons of being sincere, polite, disciplined and smart, which were equally important and those that we realize are as valuable as the other lessons in this journey of life. Punishments which were part of this learning, now feel more like a nostalgic thing of the past!

Let me take you back some 9 years back, when I was in my 7^th standard. This valuable experience has to be one of those moments which would find a place in my longing memory forever.

The year was 2007. It was a very normal day, like all those week-days when we used to resent going to our schools. The summer days made it really difficult for students to attend classes in the heat. We used to pray that every period ended quickly so that we can jump out of our classrooms. As usual, the ‘shyest person’ title in my class belonged to me. Besides shyness, I also had a reputation of being a sincere student too. Pride intended! During the English period, which was one of my favorite classes, our respected teacher, Moushumi ma’am asked all of us to take out our English Workbooks. Ma’am really transformed those classes into pretty interesting ones. As I looked forward to another joyous experience, to my horror I realized that I didn’t bring along my textbook. In those days, a grievous crime like that equaled to kneeling down on the floor, along with holding our ears. No one was spared, not even those pretty little girls! Honestly, throughout my school life, I hadn’t experienced such punishments before. So, that day, I was prepared to tick off that from my activity list. It was customary for the teacher to enquire if everyone has the text book, before starting the ‘fill in the blanks’ exercises. I, along with the other culprits who hadn’t brought along the workbook, stood up and walked towards the blackboard, lowering our heads in shame like surrendered goons. The teacher asked us to perform the ‘punishment yoga’! She had quite the surprised look on her face knowing that I was one of the offenders that day. She was quite angry as well, as every day there would be at least 2 students to break the unforgivable rule. A few minutes of harsh words followed for the entire class. I held my head lower, knowing I was one of those miscreants that day! After that, about 2-3 minutes towards the workbook session, our teacher stood up from her seat. She cleared her throat and prepared to say something more. I was assembling myself for something much more worse!

“Today, one of the students is kneeling down for the first time, as far as I remember. So, in this regard I would like to excuse him for today as it is his first time.” Announced our teacher and then, pointing towards me and asking me to move towards my seat as I had been absolved from my forfeiture.

I couldn’t believe my eyes and ears. I was already numb. Then, I stood up from my kneeling position and with my head held high and chest puffed up, walked towards my seat. I felt as if I was a VVVVVVIP. I swelled with pride. I couldn’t contain my joy! Inside my psyche, I was plunging up and down continuously. But to the entire class, I showed my dignity as if this was a very natural and predictive judgment. I had to have been the hero for the day, at least.

And then, after the end of the classes, during the recess, a bundle of textbooks arrived at our classroom desk. Those were the grammar books, which we had submitted earlier in the day after completing a few questions. As they were being distributed, I got the second shocker of that particular day. I realized, in my hurry I had submitted my English Workbook instead of my Grammar book and that had led to all the commotion involving me during the previous class. I was stunned as well as left bewildered. Suddenly, I was elevated from being Spider-Man to Batman! I wanted to rush to my English teacher and inform her that her student hadn’t committed the miraculous offense and was still clean till date!

But somewhere down the lane, I restrained as I was still reeling over the fact that my teacher had so much confidence in me while dealing with the forgiveness to my mistake. I was indeed happy that she knew her students quite well. It gave me immense pride and joy. It is still one of those moments, though a tiny one, which I have treasured it within my conscience!

As they say,

‘Teaching is a passion, not profession.’

Happy Teachers' Day to all my Teachers!