To Sir, With Love

The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires. ~William Arthur Ward

He is a teacher par excellence. The best teacher I could have asked for and I consider myself as really lucky to have had him as a teacher during my schooling days.

On this Teacher’s Day, I have the pleasure of introducing you to my favourite teacher, Sir Zampi, the genius who teaches English at my alma mater, St.Paul’s Institute, New Lamka. He is not your typical teacher who teaches as if the whole teaching exercise is a chore. He teaches with passion and his enthusiasm for the subject is infectious/contagious. He is, in my view, the best teacher that St.Paul’s has ever had.

My mind is often transported back to my schooling days when I used to listen attentively, trying to absorb each and every word he spoke. His erudite expositions of such poems as “On His Blindness” by John Milton, “To Daffodils” by Robert Herrick and Sonnet No.116 (Let me not to the marriage of true minds) by William Shakespeare still ring in my ears till today. I have a strong belief that the formation of “The Pearls”, a society of the Class-X students of St.Paul’s Institute (1997-98 batch) is inspired by his explanation of “After Twenty Years” by O.Henry. Like the two friends in the story, Bob and Jimmy, who promised to meet again exactly after twenty years no matter what their conditions might be or from what distance they might have to come, the class of 1997 had planned to meet again after ten years in Lamka. Well, it’s another story that our plans don’t materialize.

It is he, who has spurred on my interest in English literature. If I had an English teacher half as good as him in Class-XII, I definitely would have taken up English literature in graduation. I, sometimes, still regret not having done that.

Lazy bunches that we were, he used to give us notes. His notes were very much sufficient to guarantee us good marks in the Class-X Board exams. Interested, as I was, more in novels and magazines than my school textbooks, listening to his lectures and quickly going through his notes at the time of examinations usually more than suffice. And the great thing is that unlike some teacher, he never penalized us for not reproducing exact replicas of his notes. Instead, he always encouraged writing answers in our own words.

I firmly believe that learning by rote or mugging up just before the exams is no learning at all. Education does not entail mugging up of facts. Education should make you more humane, inculcate a spirit of enquiry and a thirst/hunger for knowledge. A teacher should never encourage learning by rote. He should try to inculcate a spirit of enquiry, curiosity and interest in the subject so that the student is motivated to explore the subject further by himself. That is exactly what Sir Zampi does. Some teachers just gave us notes and consider their job done. They even penalized us and gave lesser marks if we cannot reproduce their notes in the examination though the contents of the answers may be the same. Spoon feeding is not in the best interests of the students in the long run. In fact, I believe that notes should not be given to the students, at least from Class-IX. Students should be made to prepare their own notes and the teacher’s role in note making should confine to checking the notes prepared by the students and suggesting improvisations.

He taught us how to write answers. That we should answer a question in the same tense as the question. This simple, yet very important fact was never told to us by other teachers. He taught us the nuances of grammar and explained to us very clearly the meaning of words, especially difficult words, the difference in degree in the meaning of words like anger, rage and fury, etc, the difference between compared to and compared with and so many things which cannot be reproduced in this short piece.

I know that many of my classmates and his former students share the same thoughts about him. It’s just that nobody ever took the initiative to write about him.

He is my hero. May his tribe increase.

(Dear Sir, I salute you, once again, for all the dedication and passion with which you teach your students. I thought of writing this piece a long time ago but could never do so earlier. And I hope that I am not too late. This is the only thing that I can do to repay you for all the things that you have taught me. On this Teacher’s Day, as always, my thoughts and prayers are with you.)