Vidya Padmanabhan, Professor
How much do I dread thee? Let me count the ways: when you regularly walk in late and claim a bus breakdown; when your eyes give away that you’re there just for the attendance; when your laptop is studiously open… to a K-pop website; when you’re intensely studying your palms under your desk, and common sense suggests that there’s a whole lot of texting going on; when your head drops onto the desk in the very first period because you’re ‘unwell’ and only someone very heartless would ask you to get up… But then there are the insatiably curious, the sceptics and the question-hour queens — they make a teacher’s day.
Piyus Arya, Guitar teacher
From the moment you meet students, there are both positives and negatives that are fun to handle. But I’ve had some dreadful experiences with students too. Handling them used to drive me insane but then I started to enjoy it and have fun with the kids. There was an instance where a child started mimicking me and it spread like wildfire. Everyone started repeating what I said for atleast five minutes. That’s when I knew I had to weigh my words carefully. I feel karma is knocking on my door as I was a terror for my teachers as well!
Dr Priyamvadha, Professor
I dread all students on Monday mornings. Just like Monday morning blues strike students, even a teacher, however efficient, does feel the same way. A small trigger from a student can irritate me during the Monday morning first-hour class. Like students, we also feel sad to come to class after a perfectly adventurous weekend, watching late night movies with family, eating good food, and enjoying our sleep without an alarm rudely waking us up. Naturally, we’d feel a little low on Monday mornings. Students who look like angels on other days will obviously look like monsters on Monday. We teachers should understand it is nothing wrong to relax, recharge and recover over the weekend so that we can jump back to work on Monday to deal with the little monsters.
Sunitha Ravichandran, Teacher at an
after-school community centre
I have been teaching and
dealing with kids of different ages up-close for more than a year. Each day I get to learn a lot from them and every day is a fun ride. The ones that I dread to work with are the overactive ones — always have a question and a comment to make; the ones with a sense of humour are also difficult to deal with as you cannot dislike them for any reason. They always find a way to make you and everyone laugh. And then there are the empirical ones — despite there being no actual problems, they choose to identify the smallest factor as an enormous problem.
Varsha Narayanan, Art and Art History teacher
I teach art to lower primary students and art history at the college level. With the little ones, as happy and young they make me feel, mothering them is a part of it. Frequent bathroom visits, occasional snacking, fun story-telling — I really need to be on top of my game (and energy levels)! With college students, I love having an intriguing conversation. Those who think they can outsmart the teacher, sleep and text in class. Honestly, that is to be expected and I take it as a challenge to retain their attention. But making up excuses for not doing an assignment is my pet peeve.
(With inputs from Roshne Balasubramanian)
Kalaimamani Sailaja, Kuchipudi
dance teacher
As a teacher, I always prefer to adapt methods, which are youth-oriented and creative to make the art of learning enthusiastic and vibrant. With the present sensitive generation, I believe that it is important to become one with them to create a student-teacher bond, elevating them in every holistic aspect of life, which underlines the Indian tradition of guru-sishya parampara. To me, arrogance, disrespect and indiscipline are the characteristics, which are not appreciable and clearly define the demarcation of respect and attitude towards the teacher. Fun, frolic and innocence are innate to children and should be harboured to suit their age. A combination of an ideal teacher and a focussed student brings the potentiality in total, creating the ambience of pride for the teacher and fulfilment for the student.
Dr N Paul Sunder Singh, Guest lecturer
and Scout Master
I dread having students who keep quiet in the class, making us guess whether he/she understood the topic, but have a mass influence outside the classroom. I dread students who keep asking a chain of questions to every answer, as they can divert the subject to make it interesting to them, rather than understanding the subject. I dread students who tend to express their boredom by putting their head on the desk or ignoring my presence in the class. I dread students who attend without interest, but due to the obligation of being part of the class. They always spoil the class. I dread students who smartly convince to be innocent despite being the one who caused the trouble.