My Teacher, My Inspiration!
My Teacher, My Inspiration!
Mrs. Lalitha Mishra has been a teacher for the past 35 years, first in Mumbai and later in Gujarat. She has a B.A. Hons. (Eng. Lit.) and B.Ed degrees, both from Bombay University. She has taught English and Social Science to different grades and is also on the Editoral Board of her school magazine. She was the recipient of the 'Best Teacher Award' from Maa Foundation, Vapi. She currently teaches at Mar Gregorios Memorial School, Baroda.
Besides teaching she enjoys reading, writing poetry, travelling, watching comedies and thrillers, listening to soft sentimental songs as well as compering at events.
She didn’t just take a class, she provided us an experience!
Perhaps, that’s why almost half a century later, when the moniker ‘Inspiring teacher’ crops up, her image floats into the mind’s eye. She is the reason I became a teacher…by choice, not by chance. Yes, Ms. Lajwanti Karia started it all.
The scene: A nondescript school, tucked away in a corner of a bustling, couldn’t-care-less city.
The time: the 1970s
The situation: A simple, no frills classroom, blackboard and chalk, a clutch of charts (no fancy smart-class videos, no language labs…you get the drift?) Yet, why did a particular batch of students bounce out of bed to be up and ready to complete that extra assignment? Simple, because Ms. Karia had assigned it.
Her classes were a treat. Yes, for half an hour, we switched off the world. And we soared with Shelley’s Skylark, wept with Dickens’ Oliver, guffawed with Jerome K Jerome’s George and Harris, preened at Jane Austen’s party circuit or applauded the fiery spirit of Jane Eyre. Texts came alive with her rolling and relishing every word, teasing every nuance of conversation and squeezing out a moral lesson from every situation.
‘Speak that I may know thee’, commented Ben Johnson and Ms. Karia would have nodded in enthusiastic agreement. The word can change the world, she believed, and so, ‘the dictionary is your best friend’, she repeated. (Well, it did earn us a couple of ‘toffee rewards’, in the race to find ‘the longest word beginning with .…’ or ‘the shortest synonym of …’ or ‘three words with two silent letters’ or some such challenging task she set!) If, as Bacon suggested, “Reading maketh a full man”, Ms. Karia wanted nothing less. Long before technology-aided learning and ‘working models’ became fashionable educational jargon, she was gently goading us to pick up a newspaper and read, read, read! ‘A reader is a leader’, she kept repeating over and over, until the words etched itself in our subconscious. For me, in later years, I understood it all when reading became a passion, a refuge and an escape. But also, a rock-solid foundation for a rich vocabulary, effective speech content and quick comprehension- all requisites of an effective English teacher.
The most terrible thing that can be said about any teacher is ‘All she did was teach’. Of course, Ms. Karia was nothing like that. Her hawk-eyed survey spotted a disinterested/confused/scared child. A school with Ms. Karia didn’t need a counsellor. She was it. You poured out your heart to her and let her soothing voice and comforting words seep into your being...and presto, the world was bright once more!
Today, educationists quote Yeats’ line freely: ‘A child’s mind is not a pot to be filled, but a fire to be lit’. All those years ago, she was doing it. She applauded from the sidelines the most miniscule achievement of a pupil in art, poetry, riddle-joke-quote compilation or even paper-folding. These were proudly displayed on a makeshift soft board. (our very own amateur creation of paste, poster colours and chart paper!) For those five days, every contributor felt like an Oscar winner! “Let’s have a class magazine”, she said. “Let’s”, we echoed, little knowing what we were in for. Please note, dear reader, those were days before photocopy machines took over. And every page had to be laboriously handwritten. But when it was finally ready, we came close to knowing how a mother feels holding her new-born!
The total-package! That was what she wanted every student to be. Top-notch grades alone let her unimpressed. “What about your manners and etiquette?” she fumed, a firm believer in Personality Plus. Respect, reliability, courtesy, perseverance, integrity…timeless values that she instilled persistently, permanently, unnoticeably. ‘You can’t judge a book by its cover’, true. But, gift-wrapping does enhance the value of a present, doesn’t it? Ms. Karia was always elegantly and immaculately turned-out, whether in starched cottons or rustling silks. She draped them with élan, maintaining the fragile balance between ‘starkness’ and ‘over-the-top’.
I recently read that modern educational concepts require a teacher to be a guide-on-the-side rather than a sage-on-the-stage. Why, that’s just what Ms. Karia was. Classroom debate or school play, pre-test or recitation contest… she gave you your part, guided you, set you off, then…let you be. Make mistakes, discover yourself. Never breathing down your neck. Never prising open the cocoon to hurry the butterfly but letting the chrysalis open at its own pace. This required confidence, required patience, required space. She had it all.
Few things express our deepest feelings as effectively as poetry. To Ms. Karia is dedicated this verse:
You were,
A ray of sunshine that lit up our day
A towering lighthouse that showed us the way
A fountainhead of knowledge from which we could draw
A sheltering umbrella when dark clouds we saw
A live-wire in class that fired us with zeal
An organizer of activities to make us think and feel
When she left, she didn’t really go away…she left a bit of her in us. I fervently hope I’ve done the same in at least one of my students. Legacies are meant to be passed on, I guess! Missing you, Ms. Karia!
