When the Teacher Goes Wrong in Class(A Short Story)
If you’re not a good listener, please don’t bother to be a teacher!
Class 9th, section A. I was eagerly waiting for the mathematics class. A new teacher was appointed to teach our class from that day.
I was hoping hard, “This one gotta be better in the subject”.
The previous math teacher and I didn’t share the same level of excitement in geometry and calculus. I asked him many times, “Sir, when are you going to teach us problems in geometry?” He always skipped my question and changed the topic.
But over time we (Math-enthusiastic students of our class) realized that he never taught them because he wasn’t confident in those chapters. Hence, I lost hope and began reading those chapters on my own.
That was almost the end of the academic year and then came the announcement of this new Math teacher.
I heard students whisper, “He’s coming, he’s coming”.
Everyone became silent for a second. Just before he entered the class, someone called me from the backbench saying my pen fell. I bent to look under the bench and when I got up, he was standing before the blackboard staring at me as if I committed a serious crime.
He asked the students to sit down, pointed his finger at me, and asked, “What’s your name?”
He must be in his late ’40s, not taller than 5'7" wearing medium-sized round spectacles. I looked at him puzzled for a sec but couldn’t gauge his intention behind that question. I told my name.
He nodded his head and said, “I like to remember the names of the naughty students in the class. You just inaugurated that list.”
I stood there even more confused. I questioned, “Sir, I don’t understand. What did I do?”
He said, “You surely know what you did”.
I was about to say, “Sir, you must have been mistaken! I haven’t done anything…” but withdrew myself when he raised his hand in objection.
I felt embarrassed by this incident. I’m not the topper of the class but I always fell into the category of good students as per all other teachers. His behavior was so hurtful for a high-schooler.
But what happened later was strange!
By the time the class got finished, the teacher called many more students (most of them were also usually quiet in class) as the bad cops for no good reason and we all stood in disgust throughout the class.
Since then, whoever moved or turned their head in the class made it to the list of “Class-A trouble makers” that only existed in our new math teacher’s head virtually.
Honestly, I felt a sigh of relief by then. I realized the actual issue. He never wanted to listen to students, he was just so focused on keeping the class in the discipline. After the class, we all concluded that “It was not us, it was him.”
Something interesting happened the next day. He started teaching a new chapter on linear equations and asked the class a simple question, “What is a linear equation?”.
Everyone started giving examples for a linear equation like “Y=2x+1, x+y=5, etc.” But he was expecting something else.
When everyone exhausted their answers, I murmured, “Equation of a line in a plane” and that seemed to have matched his expected answer. Thanks to the previous Math teacher who indirectly forced me to make a habit of reading math books.
He exclaimed, “That’s the answer I’m looking for!” and immediately looked for the student who answered the question. He seemed a bit surprised and upset at once, to realize that it came from me.
I guess he was also making a list of “bright students” in his mind and was now confused about which list I needed to be on.
He neither scolded me nor made eye contact with me after that day. After two weeks or so, I took the transfer (personal reasons) and left the school and the city. Today, I can’t even remember his face clearly, but his attitude clearly has a blurry existence in my brain.
