This is my entry for Shailji's Tribute to the Teachers festival. Share your experiences too, leave a link when you go to her page.
This is longer than I expected it to be, but I did manage to finish writing it the same day I started it :P.
There have been so many teachers in my life that it has me feeling very lucky. My parents have been my first teachers, hats off to them. In spite of their work schedule, lack of money and family to look after, my father taught me arithmetic, algebra, geometry, spelling, badminton, chess, draught and hockey. While my Mother taught me to read Hindi and Kannada, apart from teaching me the basics of living a life. Next, in line were some of my family members who most could not stand, they taught me from a very young age what was not acceptable behaviour, ways of talking, thinking and doing. Next to them were my friends, they have influenced my life in amazing ways. Then there were Books... Among all the Teachers, Books have been a Constant.
I wasn't aware that I was learning something until I got to my teens. For the most part school was somewhere I had to go to, I had to study cause I had exams and I couldn't disappoint my parents who had very high expectations for me. When I went to school, it was like going to a job. The teachers were paid to teach people like me and I got paid with good marks at the exam. I ate the subject and then regurgitate the said subjects at the exams. Life was about Marks. Most classes I have studied in had at least 60 (yes! those of you in the US who complain about student teacher ratio, beat that ;)) students per teacher. It was chaos supreme, but in that chaos, my classmates and I have learned. Looking back, this is probably where I my belief that there is an order to chaos came about and that if you want to learn, you will learn no matter what the circumstances.
Amongst our many neighbours, there was one with who I spent most of my evenings, instead of playing. She, Mrs. Vasudevan, lived with her daughter, Anitha, who was in college at the time. Her husband worked abroad and she had two of sons who studying in the UK and USA at the time. The mother and daughter have been more a teacher and mentor for me than the ones at school. I loved going to their home because they had this loving acceptance for who I was and a huge bookcase full of books. We never had any library near our home at the time. Although my father was instrumental in putting the love of reading into me, for books to read, I went to Anitha's home. If I ever wondered about anything in the world, Anitha would provide me with a book about it. Mostly I enjoyed talking to them. Thanks to them, I felt like I was good enough as I was at that age. To them I am forever grateful. They need not have done the things they did for me, but they did, I am indebted to them.
At school, the most feared teachers were my English teacher, Mr.Eastwood and my Math Teacher, Mrs. Eastwood. My English Teacher was a WW2 veteran Englishman. He was the principal of my school. He ran the school like a Military academy. A much disciplined man, he earned my respect but he also put FEAR in my heart. I was caned once for being tardy with my shoes and once for submitting tardy homework. It made me always check if I am dressed neatly and learn to spell correctly and for the most part use good language while speaking. So guess the caning served its purpose. The math teacher was his wife; she really had a sort of vicious streak about her. She had her favorite students (all the Christian kids) and I sensed her loathing for some of my classmates. For the most part of my schooling, I stayed out of their radar. The one time my math teacher slapped me was when I forgot to name the points of the triangle in the geometry homework. But after that one incident it became a habit for me to double check my work. I still have the habit of double checking everything I do. The incident helped me develop a habit of always looking out for consequences of what I say, do or not do, for that, I do Thank her, its served me well in my life.
There were teachers I secretly admired. One was our Hindi Teacher in high school... Mrs. Kalia, I was an average student at the subject, my previous teachers were the kind that would read aloud in the class and expect everything to have entered my lead armoured head. I have to thank my mother for helping me pass the subject. If it wasn't for her constantly sitting with me to practice my reading, comprehension and writing, I would have been a different person. Mrs. Kalia was a Sikh army wife and was there at school only for a year but she knew our problem. She wasn't very good at English but she would give us the entire, word for word meanings of the text she read, and she would give all of us, even me who would take about 5 minutes to read a 6 words sentence, a chance to read in front of our class and she would encourage not make us feel like worms. It was in 8th grade that I managed to LIKE Hindi. Then there was our Biology teacher, hmm.. I can't remember her name, but I loved her classes. It was always orderly, there was 5 minutes of checking our homework, then the previous class recap and then the day's topic and then a session in answering any doubts we had in the day's class and the homework assignment. I vowed in her class that if I ever became a teacher, I would use her method. And to top it all she was the fairest teacher I had ever seen other than our principal. She genuinely cared about "her kids" as she called us. She had my love and my respect.
At college I had some really good teachers, or maybe because there was a sense of freedom. We crossed the first hurdle of a students life in place where I am from- getting into a pre-university college. I really liked the way they conducted the classes. My English lecturer, Mrs. Neeraja used every chapter and every poem and every play we had in our texts to make us "think for ourselves" as she put it. That was a new concept for me because now we were expected to write about what we thought and thinking was never used in school.
There were two physics lecturers, two Math lecturers and three computer science lecturers. They were gems when it came to teaching concepts in a manner that could be understood. I loved their classes. By this time the concept of favoritism stopped mattering to me. It was a Norm, every teacher had their favorite students. I was never in that group, because I was never the highest scoring student or a Brahmin or someone speaking any of their native tongue, but they did their jobs with professionalism. When they taught they didn't put down any student like it used to happen in school. I had learned from my previous experiences to be focused on what I wanted, not on how the other behaved. I had figured that if someone didn't treat me right it might hurt, annoy and make me angry but it is only a reflection of the perpetrator's narrow mindedness and petty behaviour not a reflection of who I was. So it really didn't matter what they thought of me. I lived through it to blog on it(what more could I ask for).
My most Beloved Teacher has been Life in general. The various people and events that I have experienced, each one of them has brought in a different flavour to my life. It has tweaked, teased, tickled, pinched, dented and soothed me. Each event has either taught me what to do or what not to do and in rare occasions has taught me to Just Be. I think that has been my most favourite lesson- to just BE.
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