School life, especially the Lower primary school time is when we do all crazy things without thinking of the results or consequences. Its the time when we don’t know why we are studying in school, what these exams for and no tensions of future. Only tension was class test papers!
Just like you all, I was super crazy when I was at St. Mary’s English Medium LP school Anchelpetty. Hey, English medium man! Haha, Those time, this english medium was a big deal. There were lot of good memories. I am still remembering some of the teachers name, Binu teacher, Pushpa teacher and all. No relation to this post, but when I started scribbling this, this incident suddenly came to my mind. Ebin Ealias K Varghese was my classmate since LP school till 7th. When we were at first standard, there was a small fight with me and him. During the fight I made a moderately severe Bite on his hand. I am not sure now, whether there was any wound but that bite become a serious issue and escalated to teachers. I still remember i was been called to staff room for explanation and Pushpa teacher had treated me with the cane stick. Hehe, good memories. Ebin is now working abroad, he is happily married and have kids.
Even though we used to get lot of cane treatments from most of the teachers, we all love them. But, there was one incident happened in my life, from a teacher, which I cannot forget ever.
A new teacher joined our school. It was when I was in fourth standard. If my memory is correct, one day, on the last period, this teacher came to our class. She was asking for notebooks to check. And called me. I took my book and came to the front. Even though I was naughty, Was good at my studies. But I had a problem with hand writing. Everyone mentioned to me that, my handwriting is poor, it is not good to read. She checked my book and replied the same thing. Suddenly she noticed that my uniform shirt has dirt on it. How can a fourth year student keep his shirt clean, without dirt?
At that time, a brown half trouser and cream white (ivory) shirt was the uniform. It was right that my white shirt was almost light orange, or the colour of mud. We played well through the ground during lunch break. Infact, most of our classmate’s shirt was similar to me. Noticing this, her next response surprised me. I was told to remove my shirt and sit infront of the class without the shirt. Totally confused, but forced to follow, I was totally lost. The whole class including boys and girls were looking at me and commenting and laughing. after few minutes, I was not able to have and eye contact with anyone. I was asked to wait there until the end of school time. After the class, no one came to me. But on next day i was teased by lot of friends. It was a humiliation for me and hunted me for a long time.
Today when I look back, as a person who trained and taught over 10000 students across Kerala, I felt like, that was a very serious incident which has to be reported. Still I don’t know what was her intention and what motivated her to do that and what result she was expecting! I think the same thing happened to my friend on next few days, but m not sure about this.
The same incident was also portrayed by my friend Arvin K Raj in some of his facebook post on a teachers day (september 5th).
Teachers, especially school teachers are the people who influence the life of kids. They have to guide, motivate and support the innocent hearts. They should not damage the dignity of the kids.