World Teachers Day is upon us, so put 5 October in your calendar. But as our mom used to say when we asked about Brothers Day, shouldn’t it be every day?
How mysterious our teachers seemed to us when we started school. It was like they were ageless and without homes, because we naturally assumed they lived at school. They kept their first names closely guarded for an entire year, until they’d write us each a note on the last day of school with their full name at the bottom. And how the excitement would spread through the class. (“Her name’s Rochelle! Her name’s Rochelle!”)
It wasn’t always easy going. They’d turn around from the piano and snap at us if we got the hymns wrong. If you brought the wrong book to school, it was as if your academic career was over right then and there. And what was up with no talking? “No more talking. Too much talking. Detention for talking.” Wasn’t the whole point to develop and apply our verbal and social skills?!
Remember how they made us swim when it was freezing cold? How we had to put our fingers on our lips like children in a Victorian novel? How we all got punished sometimes because “You guys are a team.”
But let’s also remember…
We sang that hymn incorrectly every time because we knew they’d turn around and reprimand us. It was part of the general button-pushing, and we became experts very quickly.
Also, our excuses for non-delivery of homework were legendary. Just imagine if we’d applied that creativity, that ingenuity to our actual schoolwork. We wove stories of such complexity, as if no one had ever thought of them before. And those long-suffering teachers had to listen to it. Year after year.
We swapped names every time we got a substitute teacher. We swapped seats every time our old teacher came back. We confused them on purpose just to waste precious class time – the same reason we’d ask random questions at the most inopportune moments.
We tested limits. We pushed boundaries. Like the time we weren’t allowed to leave the classroom, so we waited until our teacher left and then escaped through the window. (Don’t worry – the classroom was on the ground floor.)
We made fun of them in school assemblies. And in those same assemblies we cried and thanked them for everything. We gave them coffee mugs and soaps with heartfelt notes, which doesn’t seem like much when we look back and think about just how much they did for us. And against such immeasurable odds… It’s amazing that anyone learned anything. But we did.
And for some of us, it came full circle when we later found ourselves standing in front of a class. A class full of younger, wiser people ready to test our limits and push every button. Ready to try every trick in the book (as if we hadn’t written the book ourselves).
Not to say that astronauts and athletes don’t deserve medals. But how about sending some gold into the classrooms of the world?