My teachers
On September 5, this day, I am
reminded of my teachers. At my age, with a period of 56 years at my back, I can
recollect almost all my teacher whom I always held in great respect and awe.
Many of them were awe inspiring, a few of them were for respect and love and I
always spoke good about them, until the day when I learnt quite deeply everything,
that was there to learn about pedagogy, educational technology and practices, learning
and teaching methodology, psychological aspects of learning and deep
understanding of subject, my views about education and educator changed substantially.
With a vast experience of
teaching almost every subject at every level and that of working with a large
range of teachers as work force, it enabled me to look back at my teachers and
apply the parameters. Unfortunately, all my teachers failed to qualify except
the three who I would like to bring back from my reveries to be alive with them
again.
Of them, the first one was
my first teacher, who was old enough to be called a granny and she held my hand
to take me to my first class room. We used to call them ‘Buddhi Auntie’ and she
not only cared for us but also regaled with her art of storytelling. I still
remember the story of Pied Piper of Hamelyn, which she narrated, enacted and
made us to become part of it. I was so fascinated with the story at my early
age, I was five at that time, that I searched through the libraries and browsed
through the texts to find the famous poem ‘Pied Piper of Hamelyn’. She loved
her subject. She loved us more than anything. We know the school paid her for
her work and time. Love came free from her. A good teacher always loves his
students.
The other teacher, who happened
to be my friend even nowadays, is the one who taught me Punjabi, a language, at
my college. He taught us at Pre-University Class, that is 11th by today’s
standard. He handled well not his subject but us also and made us imbibe our
first lessons of ideology, the world around us, its socio-political character
and the thinking strategies that are required at later level to be able to
solve the problems of life and world. He knew almost everything of anything and
we followed his footsteps. I must make a
mention of his name lest I should forget. He was none other than Mr Sarwan
Singh Pardesi.
The college I studied and
the area I came from, was extremely backward so far as modernity and English as
a language was concerned. Students were not afraid of anything except English
which they thought alien to their life. A large number of them failed on
account of their poor performance in the language. I was sailing the same boat with
other until I came across Mr Mohan Sarup, our new English lecturer. He had come
from Ludhiana and was in the last phase of his service. As a senior most at
Govt. College Ludhiana, he was used to teaching postgraduate classes but here
at Zira, he was to teach us the third year students.
My first sitting transformed
me and it was an experience to sit through his lectures as he taught us William
Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Romantic poetry of Keats and Wordsworth and other
course books. Interestingly he did it without translating a word in Punjabi.
The whole class, I wondered had no difficulty in understanding him and following
what he wanted to tell. The play, he enacted himself before the class, how it was
performed by the Shakespearean actors. English was no more an alien language for
us. We developed familiarity with it, thanks Mr Mohan Sarup.
When my result was declared
I found that I was eligible for MA in English only and completed it under the guidance
of our able teacher. He was our teacher again in the final year. My reverence
to this great man has become deeper than before with his total life as one
statement, a teacher should not only know his subject but also should know the
art of delivering it. It was only a man like him who can delve deep into the
students to make them one with the subject.
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