Dear Kid, Oops.

Quite enjoying writing these 'letters'. This next one has been in the pipeline for a bit now, inspired by daily run-ins and awkward situations.

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Dear kid who waited for me at the door,

I am sorry.

While you were busy waiting for my permission to walk in, I was busy coming to terms with being Teacher. There you stood, hand outstretched, desperately trying to catch my eye while your classmates did not know how to bring my attention to what was happening without being awkward or disrespectful. I promise I wasn’t punishing you, even though it seemed that way.

You see, no one has called me Teacher before. I was always Volunteer at best. I would sing songs and teach rhymes and we would all dance around in circles. And here you stand, waiting for me to ask you to sit, and it is my job to teach you how to spell grammar and then use it, how to pronounce pronunciation and then everything else, what vocabulary means and all the words that fall under it. While you stood at the door, I was trying to build a bridge between Volunteer and Teacher.

Dear kid who asked me for permission to drink water,

I am sorry.

While you were fervently clutching on to your blue plastic bottle and its precious mouthful of water, hoping that I wouldn’t ask you to wait till the end of class, I was hoping my muscle-memory spelling of ‘persuasion,’ was correct. There you sat, with your arm in the air, calling out to me, while my mind ran riot with the endless possibilities of how your life would change thanks to a wrong spelling in your middle school English class. What if the line between make and break lay exactly at the spelling of ‘persuasion’ and it would be my fault? After all, I backspaced twice even when I was typing this. While you sat with your arm in the air, I was standing with my back to you, thinking of synonyms.

Dear kid who wished me good morning from across the hall,

I am sorry.

While you were looking at me and smiling, all ashine with early morning enthusiasm, I was trying to pre-empt all the different questions I would be facing in the classroom. I was trying to form politically correct examples to teach the importance of capitals and the power of punctuation. Of course, I went off on a tangent from there to alliterations and prepositions…There you stood, looking hopefully for recognition and fiercely proud of how well-mannered you were being, while I was chalking out my armour for the rest of the day. While you watched me expectantly, I was looking over my shoulder, absentmindedly wondering who you were talking to.

Dear kid who kept standing in class,

I forgot to ask you to sit. Oops.

There are some moments you catch me off guard, minutes where that ‘English-kaari Akka’ is just staring into thin air plotting and planning in the safety of my head. But then, I promise you this - inside your classroom, I might not realise you are asking me for water or to walk in or sit down, but I do know the difference between my prepositions and conjunctions, between rhetoric and metaphor. And by the end of the year, hopefully so will you.

To my English teachers

Dear Rajam Ma’am, Vanaja Ma’am, Sheila Davis Ma’am, Sudha Aunty, Rajitha Aunty, Vimala Aunty, Lakshmi Aunty and Yasmeen Ma’am,

How did you do it? Please teach me, one more time.

Were you never afraid or unsure? Did you really know all your grammar rules by heart and did all the spellings always roll off your tongue? Did you ever sneak a peek at your phone’s autocorrect, or a dictionary, or a newspaper, or pretty much anything else to remind yourself of the difference between ‘stationery’ and ‘stationary’? Or did you, like we all believed, just know?

You see, as students we always feel like our teachers are invincible, all-knowing, unshakable. You walked into class with those notes in your hand and that look in your eyes, and every inch seemed to scream of confidence and assurance. We believed you. And all of a sudden, I am the teacher now, and I don’t know if my kids look at me the way I looked at you. What I do know is that I do take sneak peeks, that my lesson planning is more madness than method just now, and for every question I get asked, I send a silent prayer up that I know the answer, or at the very least, know where to find it.

Did our questions ever stump you? I don’t remember, but maybe I have forgotten. Did you ever tell us you will have to get back to us or was everything always on your fingertips? When you did ‘The Jabberwocky’ with us in class and introduced us to the brilliance of nonsense verse, did any of us ask you how it can be called nonsense once we read it with a key? If it makes sense all of a sudden, does it remain nonsense? Oh, how many questions there are that could be asked!

You see, when I enter the classroom, I am such a terrible mess of excitement and caution all at the same time. I can’t wait to open some more doors, read some more texts, and get them to write their own. The other day, when a girl told me she’d like to read horror in class and another boy mentioned his pick was adventure while the third wanted mystery, I told them the best way to answer those needs was to head to the library. And then I told them another great way to fill the void was to just go ahead and write their own. And my God, did they take that seriously. Just today, I read about imaginary tropical penguins that made the best birthday presents, and quests for iPhones in Ooty. I had pages that spoke of elephants trampling on farm produce, and road accidents. There were birthdays and suicides, hide-and-seek and college stories. And this was just today.

Did you ever tell your family about our essays? Did they amuse you, excite you, entertain you? When you picked up the red pen to correct our work, did you feel a rush of both privilege and responsibility? Because I know I did. That first time today when I signed ‘YR, 15/6’ on a notebook, I know I did. When you gave us feedback on every word we wrote, commenting on how to make things better and correcting our mistakes, did you ever worry that you were being too harsh on us, maybe killing our confidence? Did you know how much to push us, or did you never set boundaries and just let us fly as much as we could? And how did you know that was the right call?

You see, I only remember enjoying your classrooms, and when my kids ask me to make grammar fun, I am a little stumped. I keep trying to think back to when you taught us prepositions and direct/indirect speech. I wonder if we played games or sang songs, and if we did, what in the world were they? Your classrooms taught us what we need to know, your pens showed us that an empty sheet of paper always spells solace, your classes gave us the confidence to believe we had something to say. As part of prep for class, I picked up the notebook of essays I wrote in Class 10 and laughed to myself. Here were pages filled with adolescent writing, immature in most parts and plain contrived in others, and you have patiently peppered the margins with smileys and ‘good job’s. So many years later, dealing with adolescent writing, I remind myself of that patience every day.

Dear Ma’ams and Auntys, you taught me across schools and syllabi. You taught me across exam patterns and curriculum necessities. And yet, at the core of every classroom, the lesson remained the same.

Fall in love with the language.

Commit to expression.

Words will find their way to you.

Don’t be afraid to make mistakes.

Go ahead and use preposterous words until you get them right.

No matter what, keep at it.

From the teacher who told me in Class 4 after an essay that was ripped off of Snow White that I could write to the teacher who saw me through literature in Class 12, I wish I could find my way back to your classroom today to ask you one thing – how did you do it?

Love,

An old student