There goes a saying, “Those who can’t, teach.” Well, I have my own version “Those who can’t do or teach become reporters and that’s probably what I am.” I am not that big a fan of the former saying. In fact, the very thought of being a teacher fascinates me. I would love to be a teacher. But I ended up saying no the few times I was offered the opportunity to become one. I just don’t have the guts. Imagine standing there in front of the class with more than 30 pairs of eyes staring at you full of expectations and anticipation. Imagine the responsibility of affecting the future of hundreds of lives and the other thousands that they in turn will affect. You have to make the good ones great and the not-so-good better.
Imagine the pressure to not fail. I mean my primary concern, if I became a teacher, would not be whether or not my students achieve great fame but rather not being able to help the students who fail. A single student’s failure in life can haunt you. The very thought scares me. Recently, a former teacher told me about how his life changed when he was powerless to help one student. It was more than half a decade ago but the sense of failure and helplessness is still fresh, he said. Whatever he could have done to help the boy was beyond this teacher’s power but still it haunts him. After talking to him , I realized that probably the wound would never heal completely.
See what I mean. The job is too scary. A teacher’s job is not just a job. It’s not just making sure that the students know the subject matter in the syllabus. The more important job is how they go about doing that. Teachers have very strong influences upon young minds. A person’s whole life – whoever he/she becomes, however he/she lives it, his/her psyche, everything – is to a great deal affected by teachers. A person is a reflection of the teachers the person has had. And if affecting each and every student to make a good and successful person out of them wasn’t enough, you have the pressure of having to reinvent yourself all the time.
A little over a year ago, I met my former school principal during an alumni gathering organized by the school and she actually remembered not just my name but my father’s too and to top it all she took an interview of me. And this is my next reason for not taking up teaching. Years and years go by but you have to remember each face. Everytime I see a former teacher, I eagerly look for signs of recognition and when they say, “Ah! Tapas Thapa. What are you doing these days? I remember once you… ” and narrate an incident, either, a naughty or good one, it fills me with mixed feelings of joy and pride. “My teacher remembers me!” And if a teacher does not remember me, then I actually feel bad. Pretty childish, I know but I can’t help it. During the expanse of their career, a teacher may come across thousands of students and they are somehow expected to remember names of every one of them. A teacher’s life is hard and it is pretty thankless as well.
As students we can be very inconsiderate towards our teachers. This can be verified by the plethora of nicknames we assign them, innumerable counts of mimicry performances we conduct caricaturing their persona and the jokes that we make about them. It felt good and funny too but man do I feel bad and guilty about them now? And we felt greatly victimized every time they assigned us homework. Ah, one never likes to take bitter medicine indeed. As doctors probably say, “Things that are bad for you are sweet and tasty and everything that is bitter is good for you!”
It probably means that the easy way out won’t get you too far ahead. I think that the most important thing a teacher should seek to develop in students is the ability to ask the right questions, to be inquisitive and then show them how to go about finding the answers and to work as hard as you can to do that. Although I don’t always do that, I think my teachers did a great job with me. Thank you!
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