A popular telugu saying “ Purushulandu Punya Purushulu veraya " meaning among important people some are more important. A very apt saying for the teachers. Many claim to be teachers but very few can really be called teachers. Like somebody had said “don’t call me a teacher call me a facilitator”. Being referred to as a teacher is a very big honor. I definitely don’t want to be called a teacher. I am a facilitator. I facilitate the process of the learning. I inculcate the interest for the subject among the students. I fire their imagination so that they discover the subject themselves and become fascinated by it.
Real teachers are very few. They are people like Jesus Christ, Gautama Buddha or other saintly men who have professed on something new that no one has professed before. Ordinary mortals are more like lecturers, tutors, readers and professors.
But students neither care about designations nor care about the fancy degrees that the so called teachers possess. They admire and like a teacher who fires their imagination. They like a teacher who appears very enthusiastic and passionate about the topic or the subject being studied. No student likes a cold fish treatment of a subject. ( a cold and impersonal presentation).
I would like to mention ten great teachers who have moulded my personality and made me what I am today. The first among them is my English teacher “Phillips”. Phillips was my English teacher in the school. He was very strict about grammar and about pronunciation. He would give us knuckle jarring taps with his iron scale whenever a mistake was committed. Scared of him I picked up the nuances of English, English grammar and pronunciation. He taught us Shakespearean dramas like Merchant of Venice, to be or not to be, Julius Caesar and others. His recital of “friends Romans countrymen lend me your ears, I came to bury Caesar not to praise him” still ring in my ears.
Students would get confused between defense and defence. Same is the case with advise and advice. One is a verb and the other is a noun. But which one was the verb and which one is the noun? The students were nonplussed. Phillips Sir gave us a very simple solution. He questioned “which comes first C or V” “ C” came the answer. “Same rule for advice and advise. The word that has c is the noun and the word that has s is the verb. AdviCe is a noun and AdviSe is a verb. As simple as that” he added.
The second teacher who had great influence on me was my social science teacher named Mrs. Mathews. Mrs. Mathews was a wife of a senior diplomat from the government service. She loved teaching. She taught us the measurement of time difference using lattitude in a very easy and lucid way. I can still calculate the difference between GMT and IST which is 82.5 degrees lattitude. The time difference between any two lattitudes is 4 minutes and 82.5 x 4 = 330 minutes. That is 5 hours and 30 minutes which is the difference between GMT and IST.
One simple minded student had remarked sarcastically “Madam, how is that a person who is not good at calculations remember the time difference between GMT and IST”. Without batting an eyelid Mrs. Mathews responded "very simple, turn your watch upside down, the time that you read when the watch is upside down is the GMT time”. The student was nonplussed by the witty answer. For example, if the time in the watch shows 1p.m the reverse will show 7.30 a.m which is the GMT time. She also taught us a very easy way to remember the nine planets. MARY VERY EARLY MADE JOHN to SHAKE UP NELLIE’s PILLOW. The first letter in the sentence will give the nine planets in the same sequence as they appear from the Sun. Thank you Phillips Sir and Mathews Madam.
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