One of the saddest things is for an educator to show inability to learn. It is catastrophic to assume that the role of a teacher is simply limited to teaching students. In fact, in a career that requires teaching lessons and values to the impressionable minds of the young, it is of paramount importance to be able to open one’s minds to learn and more often unlearn.

So today we had to ask one of our young trainee teachers on the smallest of things, but which reflected massively on her (in)ability as a teacher. We have a canister down at Bindal which we use to put banana peels in, after the kids have eaten the fruit and today, it had been put at one end of our premises so that kids were wasting a lot of time reaching there. Our teacher in question happened to be standing right next to it and despite Shaila repeatedly bellowing to her to move the canister, did not move from her spot.

Outraged as we were, we had our head-teacher talk to her about why she refused to budge. Turns out, she was not prepared to do tasks such as “picking garbage” when she signed up to teach at Bindal. I am appalled at the narrow-mindedness of some people and I went to talk to her later to seek more clarity on why she refused.

Hierarchy, which has sunk its sharp talons firmly no matter where one turns. What makes the experience of today’s even more bitter is the fact that we are working towards breaking the set norms and this established hierarchy and we have created an environment at our work place that can boast of this proudly. So everybody is a sweeper, everybody will wipe the noses and wash the faces of children in the school and everybody will teach.

But on to lighter topics, a teacher is also not supposed to have favourites right? Think again!!