The Impact of Teachers

Teachers: Being one is the highest privilege. Having one is the best blessing. 

                            -  Source: The Internet.

I stumbled upon the above quote this evening and pondered upon it for quite a bit. What’s said is true, but there are cases when that’s completely false.

Let’s talk about how we define a teacher for a sec. Who do you call a teacher? The person who teaches you some subjects at an educational interview? Sure, but that’s not it. There’s a much broader interpretation of teacher. Someone who teachers you something, be it educational or otherwise, can be called a teacher. That includes your parents, teachers at your school, elders, your friends and in my case, much of the internet and almost any person who has made even the teensiest impact on your life, helping you become the person you are right now.

Now, let’s go over the people mentioned above and how they become teachers. I don’t need to elaborate much on how parents can be called teachers, but for the sake of covering almost everything I can, here it goes: They supported you when you tried to walk and stumbled. They supported you when you talked to them in whatever alien language you used when you didn’t learn your mother-tongue. They helped you become you. And if you’ve mature enough, you know that everything they did, no matter how wrong it seemed at the time, they were always trying to teach you something, perhaps from their own experience with life. The same goes for elders.

Teachers at educational institutes, another area I don’t need to cover but I do. Which teacher do you remember who taught you to write? I don’t remember mine, not even a hazy memory. If you do, cheers to your memory. They taught you how to add, subtract, multiply, divide, differentiate and integrate. They taught you how to read and write. The reason I’m able to write this thing here is because of a teacher.

Your friends, they share so many personal experiences with you, just like your share yours with them. Those experience have, in one way or the other, helped you make decisions. They’ve taught you how to copy in exams or how to bunk those classes or how to prank call someone using the internet. You’ve taught them a lot of things too.

The next thing that I’m going to mention has helped tremendously shape myself to become what I am now: the internet. To all the people on Stack Overflow, to the authors of countless WikiPedia pages, to the people answering interesting questions on Quora, to the people who resolved a problem with someone’s computer and posted the solution on a forum and to all the writers from the blogs I read, I’m extremely grateful.

We’ve all had great teachers, some who saw the hidden talent inside of you. Maybe that teacher was a parent, a sibling, a friend or someone else. But you just can’t deny the fact that they haven’t impacted your life. If you don’t know it yet, I actually like teaching. And to all the people who’ve asked me a query, you’ve helped me learn something. Thank you for that.

But not every teacher is an angel. Remember the one who wouldn’t even flinch before hitting you? Yes, that’s the one. Not every kid is born equal. Not every kid can understand what’s written in the books. To make the world a better place, no matter how harsh this sounds, we cannot let those teachers continue teaching. If a teacher, which does this, is reading this, you should remember that you won’t impact the kid instantly, but believe me because I’ve seen this, you will make a tiny impact on the kid’s life, but not for good.

So here’s to every teacher, friend, search engine, blog, mentor, and experience.

On a side note, help me win my college’s Google Innovation Club’s Teachers’ Day challenge by liking and/or commenting on this Facebook post over here: http://www.facebook.com/umanghome/posts/10152737609876340 . You can read more about the club on their Facebook page.