Old wine in a new bottle...

Today, teaching is being re-defined throughout the world. Present day teachers face challenges like never before. Never in the worst of my nightmares have I ever dreamt a student could ask a teacher, “Ma’am, have you had champagne?” Not only is the teacher’s role being re-defined, but the relationship between a teacher and student is gaining new dimensions. We are not only guides and guardians, but now we have to be friends with the student in order to strike a rapport with them for the sheer reason that they will actually start listening to you.

We never regarded our teachers as friends and had a lot of respect for them. We did make fun of some of them behind their backs, but never dared in front. That era seems to be a bygone era now. Gone are the days, when students would be passive listeners. They are very much active, throwing a battery of questions at the teachers. Some questions are quite intelligent and many of us are not prepared for such questions at times. The age of globalisation has generated a new level of thinking among the students today.

However, along with this intelligence comes a negative side – the defiance to believe anything at first and the delayed acceptance cum respect. With the younger students this is not very difficult, but the real problem lies in the senior classes. And let me very frank, do they try your patience or what! The difficulties and challenges of the profession were unknown to me until I joined as a teacher. Once considered a predictable and monotonous job, it now has nothing predictable in it. Each day when I step into the premises of the school I do not know what the day is going to be like, inspite of a timetable which clearly states the number of classes I am supposed to teach in that day.

 Being the “mother” of 38 children (my class), I have to take care of the numerous fights and brawls and various other problems, notwithstanding the reluctance of the students to submit their notebooks with completed work on time. And then comes the call from the principal or the supervisor that they wish to inspect the notebooks of our classes. Tracking those students down who haven’t submitted the notebooks, detain them, get them to sit during their free period and complete the work, call parents if they refuse to submit inspite of the various reminders, and all this to be accomplished within the mere 2 periods that the teachers get free from their busy schedule.

I thought that after B.Ed lesson plans would be a passé. Quite the contrary actually. The supervisors happen to walk in on the day when you are most unprepared and wish to finish sundry jobs and problems with the students. “No objectives on the board?” Gosh! I had forgotten all about the learning objectives! AMP box? Shit! I had forgotten it in the staff room yet again! Oh! What a mess! The voice starts faltering and the teacher starts mumbling, not a good sign at all.

Opposed to our traditional beliefs, school life does not compose of academics only, at least not in the progressive schools of today, where we believe all round development is as important as scholastics. Celebrations and activities throughout the year, one after the other, leave us no time to breathe. Independence day, Teacher’s day, annual day, annual fete, sports day and many more such days, the ending of one heralds the beginning of the other. And in between all this, we have to squeeze in corrections of notebooks and test papers.

As I have already stated, this job isn’t as easy as it used to be once. We have great responsibilities and one cannot escape from the responsibility of lives. We all go through the many ups and downs, sometimes proud, sometimes questioning our abilities and even education. My HOD says that a teacher’s profession will always include the two contradictory expressions, smiles as well as scolding. We need to smile as we scold and scold as we smile. I didn’t understand the meaning when she had first told me, but now I know. If you don’t smile not only will your students not be interested in what you do (which they seldom are these days :P), but you will not be able to bear the pressure and anxieties. So we have a gamut of emotions in the staff room, smiles, tears, laughs, glum faces, and so on – Life in its entirety.