Lessons for a Teacher.

        

 My journey as a lecturer started in 2002 when I was hired as a Teaching Assistant in a reputed Arts and Science college in Madurai. I was so happy that I was selected out of many capable candidates. I had not even completed M PHIL then. 

Lesson 1: Know your audience!

So it began,  teaching English in College. Sounds so fancy, does it not?   I was the youngest of all my government employed senior faculty members in the department of English. I stood confidently in front of my students, a room full of teenagers, discussed medieval fiction and poetry, but the staff room gave me the jitters .

   I tried to fit in and I did by pretending to be one of them. I was strict and I didn’t leave the classroom without completing what I had planned for that day. I continued even when  they gave me the please-stop-right- now look . I made them stand in the class if they had not brought their text books. Horrible, horrible days   for  both  them  and  me.

            I read somewhere that if you have to pretend even something simple as a smile itcan leave you drained. I could not pretend anymore. I began to look at them not only as students but as a group of young people who would rather kill themselves than to listen to one more lifeless boring lecture.  By that time I also realized that I need not get others’ approval as long as I teach and my class gets it. I tried to fit in with the wrong crowd, for a teacher students is their audience. I stopped teaching language and started talking (the lessons and about all life’s stuff) to them. They listened and they learnt.

            Everyone talks about how noble this profession is and that it is in the hands of a teacher to build a better nation as we are in direct contact with the future citizens but a teacher’s salary(in private institutions) is something to be kept as a secret. I enjoyed teaching but I was paid low and so had to quit.

            Talking your heart can get you into trouble. I know this better. It is the sorry state of us that we have to survive between two worlds- of students and of the employer. I am expected to stand all tall and keep my foot down in my class and I am expected not so to my employer.

    Lesson 2:  Speak your heart or not?      

      After quitting from my first job I joined as a lecturer in another arts and science college in the city.  The students were on the more mischievous side. The society had its bad influence on the youngsters too. Initially I had trouble with the guy students who thought themselves as MEN and I was seen merely as a young woman.

This is a highly patriarchal society that a woman is someone  who is seen less than a man. Once I went out  during  lunch to a shop across the college. I went past a group of students who were sitting there whiling away time. They whistled looking at me. I didn’t mind them  and kept walking, a  little apprehended to face them as I had never gone to their class. They didn’t stop with that though.

 As I was gulping down the cold drink I had bought they threw tiny pebbles very close to me, which made the shopkeeper mad. He shouted at them and they stopped. After I was done there I went to them, looked at them and told them that I had joined in the department of English recently only to see them throw a silly laughter. With a smile in my face I told them that as I had not troubled them in any way they should not too. Their quietness let me know that they got it.   

            I had no trouble connecting with the young minds, it’s the so called older and wiser group which I don’t get at all. So, everything was going fine in this college till the day all women faculty were called for a meeting. A senior woman faculty addressed us and told us that all women faculty must wear a ‘bun hairdo’ as part of the dress code. Yes,  the  purpose of the meeting was ‘bun.’ 

            It sounded silly to me at that time that with all the things we could do with this amazing bunch of young people, all they think about was  imposing  one more rule to womankind, that too  based on the appearance. I could not accept the fact that people here think that a woman has too many limitations because of their  anatomy. In this case my long hair! How could my long hair (plaited or pony-tailed) be a distraction to my students? I raised this question in a faculty meeting and the management’s answer was even more stupid than the new code itself. It was said that there was no difference between the girl students(when they come in sari) and the woman-faculty members. I said I found no difference between the boy students and the man faculty members as for both the dress code was trousers and shirts I was fired.

            My journey (trouble) did  not  end there. After nine years, after working in two more colleges in the same city (of which in one college women faculty had to uniform sari) I took a four year break. And the things that happened in that period will be covered under the topic “domestic violence” very soon.  Currently I am working as an Assistant Professor in an Engineering College, and this time it is a “coat” in the dress code here that is driving me crazy.