Neither I exactly remember the point from where I started the journey nor have I had the fixed destination curled, to tread the road I have taken. The sense of surety did not occur in my mind, as the plant wasn’t at its bud. Accidently, I got crossover at the selection board for the course that should follow later on. I can blurrily stroke back those magical words, when one lady from the panel shot at me, “can you teach a student?” Actually it was supposed to be a big question for a not yet budded leafless stalk, which’d barely completed his plus two- who doesn’t still understand himself completely! “Yes, M’am” was all I could say to the interviewer. May be she might not have sufficed to the query.
Thought it would have never happen but it happened. After a brief introductory course, we were henced to a place, a place very different from what it used to be. It was 1st March, on the first day of the first week, standing before 32 pairs of innocent eyes in the third grade class, greetings extravagantly and I presumed, expecting more than what they’d been going through to their kindling curiosity of learning. Within that, I tried to compose myself and reassured, I ‘ll do my best to give them best in whatever way it may cost- if it is for them. But, at the back of my mind, could not forget that I am just an apprentice , a learner for myself where, still it’s not yet half the journey to the top, to claim, ‘I am their new teacher’. More than half a year flipping over the leaves of the prescribed texts, doing just narration of what is being asked to do seem merely a puppet: what else an amateur can do? Albeit one possess a little extent of broad concept but without a proper channel (skills and strategies) to retrofit, an invigorating thought of igniting those sensitiveness of a young mind was next to impossible. More over, residing in a hamlet concealed from the outside happenings, nothing much can be done. And adding to the problems, with limited resources and materials, one can do nothing. Vagrancy in professionalism seemed to crawl inward in. It was like driving a cab with passengers in a bizarre labyrinth.
With half-filled satisfaction, I was back to the institute, to shape those ram shackle traits I have encountered during periods and months of uneasiness, to curb those very falsities that I was handicapped and to maneuver towards a professional one. Back in College had I voyaged through different reminiscing explorations! Beginning from the understanding the psychological variations of a child to different principles of teaching/learning strategies and pedagogies, and the professionalism developments; were we accentuated to utmost guidance by the professionals. The sharpest din that tinges my thought is that, to be a teacher one need to regard the slice of every bit of art and mastery. It really is really a crime to keep space for complacency in teaching/learning.
Entering into this world, a new world, everyone’s life would be in different panoramic hues. Few more months from here, a new teacher will be placed, to the forefront of another 30 or more pairs of eyes. This time with different prospectus with same perspectives and weapons fully equipped, there will be dearth of uneasiness after all these years of head thudding and hard chiseling moments. Now, I feel fearless to those words by a lady “can you teach a student?” There’s doubtless that by now, we’re quiet coloured-enough-apple, where a different soul can expect a peck of their share.
As and after being a teacher, this is not the final stage as well. Teaching and learning should go in-line like the biological cycle-to the exact U-turn. Learning should remain pre-disposed to every angle and axles of aspects for a teacher. Someone rightly said, teaching isn’t the end process of leaning instead it is the beginning of learning process in life. Knowledge is sans bound and complacency should be void in human, at the most in teachers.
“Teaching is not just filling up the container but lighting the fire” says in the words of W.B.Yeats. As you read these words of the great one, the question may arise in your head, ‘Am I filled enough to fill another?’ Wishing you all the future teacher friends, a successful career.
