I’m doing relief teaching again today, at a school in Dover Road. I’m now in the library, waiting for the next class to begin at 2.25pm. Just now, after the Physics class ended, students for the next lesson started trickling in. One of them, a tall, lanky boy, looked at me and said,”Hey, weren’t you the teacher that took us for the Log class? That was 2010.”

Looking hard at him, I replied,”Yes, must be. And you look familiar too, except that I now remember you being shorter, but just as thin.” He smiled. “I really enjoyed that class.” “Me too”, I remarked before leaving.

Nothing pleases a teacher more than a meeting an ex-student who has benefitted from his or her teaching. Very often these students have grown up quite a bit and I don’t recognise some of them, but they would stop me in my tracks in a public place, or wave at me from afar and I would take some time to search my memory. Often I dont remember their names already, as so many batches have come and gone. Once a young man stopped talking to his girlfriend, stood up and said hi to me and we chatted for some 5 mins; I hope they are still together.

Sometimes I wonder where the rest have gone to, what they are doing now, and whether they are happy and successful, howsoever they define success. Some I found in facebook, and a few came back to help me tutor. Of the latter, three came in Sec 2, stayed until JC2, underwent NS, and now are undergrads, and I get to meet them every week and ask about their current lives. From all of them I learn about what matters to young people nowadays, their worries, their aspirations and their hopes for the future.

I hope parents spend more time with their children, for some of them tell me things they wouldn’t share with their parents. But I also often tell these youngsters to understand their parents, instead of always asking to be understood.

Parents have their own worries, fears and hopes too. I’ve advised parents before on how to handle their children, and vice versa, and when either party tells me things have become much better, that too, makes my day.

I also feel happy when I have induced a person to do self-reflection, because I do it everyday, in fact almost every moment, even when I’m teaching. That, I think, is the only way to improve. I mean, I don’t see how you can improve if you don’t know what you don’t know, and you also don’t know what you know. Thinking about your own thinking, often called metacognition, is very important in life. I’ll talk about this in another post.

Ilyasa