Teaching is a two-way street

Anindita Bhattacharya

Teachers are known for being forgetful. Especially, psychology teachers like me who struggle to remember their students’ names or faces when they meet them for their convocation. Can a self-diagnosis of prosopagnosia or face blindness be justified in that case? Or is it a professional hazard? Remembering hundreds of names and faces, year after year can get a bit overwhelming at times.

Anyways, this article is not about me or the teachers who are forgiven for being forgetful.

This article is about students who have left a mark; students who can make an absent-minded professor like me sit and reminisce about how much I have learnt from them.

I still remember the first day I started teaching. I literally had goosebumps when I realized that many in the post-graduation class I was teaching, were older and more experienced than me. I was teaching a course in education and these individuals seemed definitely wiser, were in the teaching profession for years, in short, intimidating to someone who was just fresh out of PhD.

I tried to put on a façade of being wiser than my age but soon realized that there was no need for it. The oldest student I had was the humblest. She was someone with many years of experience in the nursing profession. She was somebody who could have chosen to have a well-paying nursing career abroad but chose to pursue education instead. She had a dream unlike many others to stay back in India, pursue a career in education and open an old-age home when she could afford it.

I was amazed by her strength of character. She could infuse the class with laughter and had interesting tales to tell from her past experiences. She brought in a lot of care and warmth with her and was a wonderful listener. Her mere presence made the class calmer. I still remember the interesting conversations we had about mental health, student well-being and how she had an uncanny way of making people comfortable in their shoes.

When I look back now, I feel grateful for having her in my very first class. She taught me how to brace each and every situation with curiosity and enthusiasm. She taught me to be genuine and keep my mask at my desk when I come to teach, the true way to connect to students was by bracing my vulnerabilities. She made me realize that there is no age for learning something new, and that teaching is indeed a two-way street.

The second person I would like to mention is somebody who taught me the true meaning of resilience. Here I was, thinking of myself as a trained clinical psychologist, a teacher who had read all the important papers on student well-being, who had at least a few years of teaching experience, when she came strutting along ruining all the theoretical notions I had about resilience. If one could give ‘grit’ a face, it would be this student’s whom I’ll call ‘Y’.

Y was a frail little girl you would hardly notice in a class. She was quiet, unassuming and someone who would take her time to pose a question. She was somebody whose voice would get drowned easily by other loud voices in the class. But, she was not just ‘that’.

I realized in the course of one year that I was looking at a girl who was strong like an oak tree. She was from an extremely underprivileged background, with parents who were economically deprived and could afford to teach her only because she was on a full scholarship. She had faced a lot of hardships at home and constantly felt threatened by events that were out of her control. She could hardly eat because of the stress she always faced but she chose to fight back. She was someone who never gave an excuse of her hardships to ask for an extension for her assignments. She was always soft spoken, polite and respectful towards me and others even when her emotions were running amok. She was not the brightest, but the most engaged student I ever had, who had a fire in her belly to fight all odds and learn no matter what.

She was also an inspiration to others. Y was someone who had a passion to run, she would run marathons and win accolades. It was almost like running was a way for her to cope with her emotions. I remember that there were days when she had sprained her ankle while running, or she was down with jaundice, but she always had a patient smile on her face. She would keep doing what she wanted to do no matter how difficult the situations were.

I’m not sure if my teaching made a difference in her life, but I do know that her presence had an impact on me and others who know her. She seems like a living example of the existential philosophy of ‘no excuses’. Someone who realizes that life is too short for us to blame others or our circumstances, and that one has to live up to the choices one makes.

When I reflect, I have a strong feeling that these experiences would not have been possible if I was not in this profession where you can witness the lives of others so closely. Teaching, as a profession, provides immense opportunities to re-discover oneself and unlearn the things which stall one’s growth.

To sum up, I would like to end with a Haiku
I thought I knew it all
While teaching, met pupils who were wiser
Now, I know better.

The author has been teaching psychology at Azim Premji University for the last six years and is also coordinating the activities of the mental health and well-being centre at the School of Arts and Sciences. She is a licensed clinical psychologist and has been working in this field for almost 11 years now. She can be reached at anindita.bhattacharya@apu.edu.in.