Hello Mr. Chips!

How I love the story with its sonorous roll-call. A diffident schoolmaster who grew into his job and finished his tenure magna cum laude! No thrills, no titillation and a sad ending. Yet it is a story that I have returned to again and again and it never disappoints.

Though I come from a long line of teachers, if the family tree is to be believed, I never wanted to teach having seen first-hand what it entailed. So, even though most of my classmates went on to do their B.Eds, I chose to explore other pastures. But one can never escape one’s genes, or so it seems: post retirement, I was roped in to teach via the Internet – I became an e-teacher! Now, once again, I have ‘retired’ and can indulge in reminiscence.

Aditi, Amita, Anuradha, Avantika……Deepti, Delna….. Gayatri, Gulveen…. Harsha…… Kadambari, Karishma …..Maclean, Misha, Moumita…. Nandita, Neeti …..Payal, Pervin, Pragya, Prakash, Priya… Rajshree, Rishabh, Roheena…. Sahaaj, Salil, Samalin, Subhash, Swapnila…. Tanvi, Tawina …..Vivek ……

…… they were just names to me till they started sending in their assignments. Gradually, I got to know them through their writing: some were eager, some recalcitrant, some energetic, some lethargic, some receptive, some quite deaf to advice. There were those who showed sparks of genius and there were the strugglers. They were diverse in attitude and capability – a motley crew - and they provided a challenging audience. It was only later, when circumstances allowed me to access their personal data on the Institute’s files, that I realized that some of the younger students were incredibly adult and some of the adults were incredibly young! How revealing our writing can be!! There was one student who fluctuated between maturity and a typical teenager, for want of a better description (I have yet to meet two teenagers who were similar – so what makes ‘typical’?) that I was tempted to ask whether I was dealing with two persons instead of one. I later learnt that the student’s mother was a teacher and had helped her with some of the assignments!

All in all, it was an exceptional experience and a learning curve – teaching over the Internet and interacting solely through the written word which, coincidentally, the courses were all about: News Reporting in the print media, Short Story Writing, Feature Writing and Practical English.

I was often amazed at the feedback – the very eclectic selection of poems and book titles that were sent in as personal preferences for the requested reports. This forced me to read books that I would never have looked at previously. Some books I would still not read anyway, but others made me realize that to teach, one had to expand one’s tastes. I also had to study like I never had before. I was, in my time, a questioning student and I was glad to find that my students were also interrogative, some of them fiercely so. The icing on the cake? Each and every participant in the Distance Education Program was there because he or she wanted to be there. It was a very personal interest that brought them to the courses and, therefore, they were a captive – and captivating! - audience. Here was no ‘whining schoolboy with his satchel and shining morning face creeping like a snail unwillingly to school’.

Have I, like all teachers, touched tomorrow? I think so. Have I made a difference for the better? I hope so. Did I love ‘teaching’? I know so!