Snippets From A Teacher’s Diary.

Why I Love Parent-Teacher Meets.

The parent teacher meet today heralded the completion of one session. Most of my students (I prefer to call them my kids) have done very well and have been promoted to the next higher class. Even I have been promoted. When I joined here four months back, I was the subject teacher teaching physics, chemistry, and math. I am the class teacher now. And this session onwards, I’d be taking more classes and teaching environmental sciences as well.

When my colleague asked me how has been my experience in a nutshell, I actually did not know what to say. I’ve had mixed feelings about the whole episode. I’ll tell you what does being a class teacher in my school mean. It means I’ll be responsible for some 40 kids, doing some extra donkey-work like taking the attendance everyday, adding up the figures at the end of the month and things like that. This is pretty menial work that requires no creativity or imagination. On top of that, I’ll be held responsible for whatever my kids do henceforth, be it my boys breaking the window panes while playing cricket or my girls proposing to the senior guys. Most kids find History boring (even I used to), so when they do not do the History homework, I’d be blamed. I’ll have to make sure that the desks and the chairs and the classroom remain shipshape and my kids do not whistle or do not throw a single paper rocket in school. If it’s any consolation for them, I already feel like a jailor in charge of innocent victims treated as convicts. You just can’t put a child with a football in a large room and expect him not to kick around. Kids are kids after all. They break windowpanes, whistle, come to school without studying, run around and dirty their shoes, and throw paper rockets at people walking on the roads. It’s wrong on my part to hush them up every time they open their mouth to say a seemingly silly joke. 

I have never enjoyed the parent teacher meets in the entire 14 years of my school life as much as I did today. It’s always different to be on the other side of the table and watch the parents and kids. I have also observed that while among Bengali families, only the moms turn up at the parent-teacher meetings, both parents show up for others.

After the meeting, we were sharing our day’s experiences over pizzas our principal treated us to. "How was your first meeting?", she asked me.

"Ma’am, I think the PT meets should be converted into fathers-teachers meets henceforth. Moms strictly not allowed"- I blurted out in front of more than a dozen teachers.

There was complete silence. Everyone was giving me a stunned look. No one reacted because they did not know how the other person would react. Finally, all of them including our dear principal burst out into relentless laughter. The typical side-aching, dentition-exhibiting, closing your eyes and contorting your face types.

What came next stunned me. Because when she asked me who I thought was the best looking dad, everyone screamed equivocally, almost at the same instant- Sakshi’s dad. And then, everyone gave each other surreptitious looks and guilty smiles and started the laughter round once again. 

At least we teachers agreed on one thing. All of us. Sakshi’s dad.

sunshine.