When I was 9 years old, I thought that a teacher is a titleholder.
A person who stands in front of the class
and teaches while the students are listening.
I studied in a low income private school for 5 years
there I saw many of my friends are disinterested in their studies.
Some of them would not pay attention in the class
while some of them would be absent for days.
I observed that this used to create a lot of pressure and stress on the teachers.
And it made me question:
How challenging is it to be the only person responsible
in the room for the learning of 40 students?
It made me question: Why do students need to rely on that one teacher?
When will the students realize that there's a teacher in them?
I wanted to do something about this.
So, I decided that whenever and however possible, I would try to help my teacher.
So everyday, I would help her with taking the class attendance,
writing the daily agenda on the board.
And during practice time,
I would try and help a group of students who were struggling with their worksheets.
And when my teacher would be absent,
I would get on a call, and ask her things that I can help her with.
Then, as discussed, I'd monitor the class, give them vocabulary words to learn,
some math problems to solve, and sometimes even homework.
Over time, more classmates helped me with this.
Slowly, we started taking ownership of our own learning in the classroom.
This continued for some time. But I wanted to do something more!
Many of my friends needed help with reading and comprehension.
Me and my friend Pinky were really passionate about reading,
so we started a reading club.
In our club, we had students from 4th, 5th and 6th grade
and many of them had a low reading level.
We slowly started giving them books with more pictures and less words.
And once they were able to read those books,
we tried to increase the difficulty level by giving them books with more words.
We also discussed things like character, their traits,
the main events and the central idea of the story.
After some sessions our class teacher tested them and they showed an improvement!
We even saw one of our friends grow by 1.5 reading levels in just one month!
Eventually,
we also got some opportunities to conduct reading circles with elder people.
After these experiences,
I felt really proud of the fact that for that brief moment, I was the teacher,
irrespective of my age and which class I was in.
I have a question for all of you:
Are there things that you are passionate about?
I am sure that it’s a yes, because I have many passions.
Some of my passions include cooking, knitting, gardening and sketching.
I owe all these passions to different teachers that I have had in my life.
Teachers like Mr. Farhan, he is one of the gardeners in our school
and he helps me learn cool things about permaculture.
These days I am learning a new form of gardening known as "aquaponics."
Or my Mother, who taught me how to cook
and be independent in the times when she is not around.
You may have noticed that neither of them
were the titleholders of a teacher.
But in their own ways, they were teachers.
Think about it. Do you have such teachers in your life?
I'm sure that you do!
In my community,
people do different types of things and I can learn so many things from them.
Such as organization from the garbage collector, cleanliness from the sweepers,
mathematics from the carpenters, cooking from the housewives
and how to run a business from shopkeepers.
But do we ever try and think of the things that we can learn from them?
No, we think because of their age, gender, and the kind of work they do,
they can't teach us anything.
But in fact, they can teach us a lot of different things.
I believe that everyone is a teacher.
You are a teacher, I am a teacher.
It don't matter what age we are, what gender we are, or what work we do.
I believe that if we start seeing everyone around us as teachers,
one day we will achieve that perfect ratio 1 is to 1.
Thank you.