Tiny Little Flames

I’m greeted with enormous smiles, twinkling eyes, and expectant faces every time I enter a class. In front of me are 50 odd students waiting to listen to their weekly lecture. Every time, I take a class, the experience is different from the one before. It’s like the children have their own way of steering the class in any direction they please.  For as long as I can remember, I never considered teaching as a career. I want to become a book-editor someday, and plan on writing a book in the future. However, there’s a plot twist. I’m currently working as a personality development trainer in schools and I have a lot to narrate.

On my first day of school, I was overwhelmed. More so because I had to teach students of class 1, who if I may say, are quiet a handful. You see little minions running around here and there, tugging at you, wanting your attention, complaining about a missing eraser or color pencil or refusing to sit in their place unless you promise to play games with them for the next forty minutes. I love kids, and teaching standard one appeared like a piece of cake till I stepped into the classroom.

To say I struggled would be an understatement. Managing a class seemed harder than I had ever imagined.  I wanted to run and scream along with the children.  I left the class feeling defeated. No one wants to be a crybaby at the first day of their job. But there I was. Being a crybaby.

It’s been 8 months since my first day as a teacher, and safe to say, I look forward to it with every passing hour.

So what changed, I ask myself. Have I come to the realization that there’s no hope for me to ever edit a manuscript, and so I’m being complacent and doing what’s being offered or have I developed a strange attachment to the children? I think it’s neither. I’m going to sound extremely cliché but I’m going to say it anyway; I feel a sense of purpose whenever I’m walking up & down the noisy hallway, strolling down the corridor with the air reverberating with a cacophony of “good mornings, and good afternoons” and the occasional smiles passed on by the students. It helps me focus on the bigger things in life. It also helps me focus on the little more significant things in life-like the way a child’s face lights up when they receive a compliment or when asked to rub the board as if it’s the only big responsibility that matters, or the way their faces droop when you stop them from talking or in the way they look at you as if you contain all the secrets of the universe. It’s surprising how such tiny hearts can contain so much love for someone they might not even see in the future.

I often find myself replaying scenarios of what the students told me, their expressions playing vividly in my mind, their gestures striking a chord. I only recently stopped being a student and it’s funny how the roles have changed.  It’s even more strange finding myself on the other side of the spectrum looking at things from a different perspective. Without realizing, I have a routine, one that keeps me on edge most of the time.

Robert Frost in his famous poem, ‘The Road Not Taken’ writes:

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

I’ve been contemplating on the above stanzas which further led to the realization that teaching has made a lot of difference. It hasn’t been very long but maybe just maybe it’s exactly what I need. I don’t know if I’ll continue being a teacher but what I do know  is that sometimes the road less traveled leads you to places you never expected to go. You experience things you never did before, and you transform into someone you never thought you could be.

And sometimes, tiny little flames, create enough light to kindle your spirits.