The power of a teacher
Come to the edge.
We might fall.
Come to the edge.
It’s too high!
COME TO THE EDGE!
And they came,
and he pushed,
and they flew.
-Christopher Logue, British poet
Every kid is a genius. Any doubt about it?
No.
Then why do we need education, schools, and teachers?
To push them off the edge, to show them that they can, to tell them that they are geniuses.
Yes, kids are geniuses, but their genius is yet unexplored. We need education to explore and exploit that genius. We need schools to provide them with opportunities of exploration and discovery. And we need teachers to gently lead them to their greatness.
Indeed, it’s the teachers. You can never tell what power they hold in the lives of children. They can ignite passion, inspire greatness, and expose genius from the very core. They shape countless lives and they steer the course of the world.
That is, if they know.
Many teachers do, and we have all felt their influence. It is as if they hold a magic wand in their hands. And there are those who do not know, and in place of the magic wand, they hold a cane of torture in their hands.
Let’s see if this teacher in the excerpt below knows what she is doing. The excerpt is from Little Master (Chapter 9: What a teacher!)
“But you are not caterpillars!” the teacher thundered, all of a sudden.
Everyone turned to look at her. They were not surprised at all, rather they were all very eager. Eager to hear what she had to say and eager to see what she had to show.
The boys and girls looked at their teacher with hungry eyes and craving hearts.
She too looked deep into their eyes and peered into their throbbing hearts.
Their eyes were lovely. She had a wild desire to draw a picture on the canvas of those eyes. She knew she could draw and paint anything that she liked there. She could freely paint the scenes of a deadly past and a gloomy future. But then, she decided to splash them with the colors of life.
Now their hearts. She always had a free access into their hearts. She knew their hearts were as large as the world itself. Yet they were so fragile she could burst them with one piercing word. So she chose to build them up.
Such is the power of a teacher!
“You are heroes and champions, geniuses and giants,” she declared, and her words echoed. “Shine, my little stars, shine. You have enough brightness in you to illuminate the whole world.”
To the little boy, the teacher’s words were like a bolt of lightning. He got a pleasant shock and he shivered.
That was when he realized that he had been imagining things. There was no teacher, no garden, no butterflies. It was all his imagination.
“Everything’s possible in imagination,” the little boy said to himself wistfully. What a teacher she was! She saw her students as who they could be in life. And they saw her as an angel. What a way to see each other!
Truly, what a way to see each other! And what a teacher!
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