What I Expect My Teacher To Be

Motherhood calls on you to take on different roles. As a sample, let me tell you about the first time I played poet! It happened like this.

My daughter was taking part in a recitation contest, the topic for which was What I Expect From My Teacher. I searched high and low for a readymade poem that I could just teach her, but was not very lucky. D-day was fast approaching and so I knew the only way I could get one was to sit down and write one myself.

"There is nothing you cannot learn if you approach it systematically," was my husband's encouraging advice. So I sat with her the next day and asked her about what she wanted from her teacher. She had some very simple demands. I share the list here because it is very different from what my expectations of a teacher are and I am sure it is not similar to your list either.

1. When I do homework she must check and say "Very good Anna."
2. If I am absent, teacher should ask me why I did not come.
3. She must take me out of class.
4. She must teach me everything.

I sat for a while transfixed by the simplicity of her demands. I found it hard to imagine that some of these were expectations. And then I sat down to write the poem.

I labored over the poem for a day or two. My first attempt was something like this.

Teacher, teacher, pumpkin eater...

Nidhi did not like the beginnning. I tried to explain but she won. So I abandoned that one there. The next was like this.

East or west, you are the best,
But there are some times,
You are a real big pest.

My husband advised me that we should not allow Nidhi to participate in this contest unless we planned to change her school soon. I sometimes wonder if it had something to do with the verse. But nothing could stop me now. I looked at her list again, labored some more, and finally managed after many days to come up with this. Please look at this poem with gentleness and understanding. After all it is my first poem.

What I Expect From My Teacher

Dear teacher,
My list for you is long,
Please listen while I say,
This is what I expect,
From you everyday.

You must be there to guide me,
When I learn new new things,
To say “Very good Anna’,
When I do the homework for the day.

Please ask me when I am absent,
Where were you yesterday?
This shows me dear teacher,
That you really care.

Teach me to read,
Write, count, and spell,
Tell me some stories,
Of kids, animals, and elves.

Take me out of class,
To see the birds and the bees,
Teach me about honesty,
Cleanliness and peace.

You must be thinking,
‘She expects the world from me’,
But that’s just because
Dear teacher, You mean the world to me!!

Yep! I wrote it. There is nothing you cannot learn if you approach it systematically, you see.

And I Want To Be...

At age two, when her three cousins declared to a not so small gathering of grandparents, aunties, uncles, and some neighbors, that they wanted to be a scientist, a doctor, and an engineer respectively, my daughter casually informed a stunned audience that she would like to be a patient.

Since then she has aspired to be many things; the lady who rings the bell at school, the postman who gets to cycle, the flag bearer at march past, the billboard painter who is allowed to get messy, and many other similar things.

I do not ask her often now. But every once in a while she does inform me about a change in ambition. It happened today too.

"Ma, I want to be the principal of St. Agnes School."

I was mighty impressed. At last my baby was growing up. I held her close and told her about my family, the school that my uncle owned, my uncles and aunts who were principals, my mom who won the Best Teacher Award in the small town she lived in, and lastly, I told her about myself—an ex-teacher.

She listened to every detail and seemed really pleased that she was keeping up some kind of family tradition, without really intending to. I was sure the decision had not been easy on her, because of the stark contrast to her previous ones, and was eager to know about the deciding factor that led her to make it. And why only St. Agnes?

“Why do you want to be principal of St. Agnes kanna?”

“Because she gets to go for picnics with the first standard, the second standard, the third standard, and the fourth standard mummy!”

I sat down for a while. And aspired to be what I always wanted to be. Ironically, it was patient too!