{"id":3279,"date":"2016-05-02T22:14:26","date_gmt":"2016-05-02T16:44:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=3279"},"modified":"2016-05-02T22:14:26","modified_gmt":"2016-05-02T16:44:26","slug":"teachers-day-school-students-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=3279","title":{"rendered":"It Takes Just One Teacher To Change Your Life"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

T<\/span><\/p>he memory of <\/span>Teachers\u2019 Day<\/span><\/a> has a particular smell, a happy mixture of new clothes, fresh flowers, and chocolates. It also has a peculiar sound: Of laughter ringing through the air, an over-enthusiastic \u201cGood morning, teacher\u201d greeting, and applause. Most memories of Teachers\u2019 Day and <\/span>teachers<\/span><\/a> are attached to school and the multitude of teachers who have touched our lives<\/span>\n\nMy memory is attached to the one teacher who saw something in me that no one did. My \u201cTo Sir, With Love\u201d hero is my tuition teacher who taught me English and <\/span>History<\/span><\/a>.<\/span>\n\nBack in school, as my elder sisters pursued engineering, my family hoped that I\u2019d take up medicine \u2013 but science held little appeal for me. But I\u2019d never speak about it.<\/span>\n\nOne day, my <\/span>tuition teacher<\/span><\/a> Mrs Sujata Menon asked me to bring my mother to class. It freaked me out; I expected her to complain about how my frequent giggles disrupted the other students and that I skipped homework more times than was acceptable. That afternoon, as I stood shaking in my sandals, my teacher told my mum something that would change my life. She said that I had an intuitive understanding of the English language; she spoke about how I took to English like a fish takes to water. She sold to my <\/span>mother<\/span><\/a> a talent I didn\u2019t know I had. <\/span>\n

For the first time, I wasn\u2019t afraid to be smart, and she often stayed after school to work with me.<\/blockquote>\nMy mother, someone who held a <\/span>PhD<\/span><\/a> in Urdu <\/span>literature<\/span><\/a>, took it as a compliment and ran with it. Even the little nudge and pressure I felt toward pursuing medicine was lifted. Both my tuition teacher and my mother encouraged me, and diligently read all the essays and passages I wrote. They understood my mediocre grades and lack of interest in some other subjects. All my mother really expected from me was to excel in English \u2013 which I did. <\/span>\n\nAnd today, I find myself in this beautiful place in life where I tell stories for a living. All because one teacher paid attention, and decided to act upon it, setting in motion life\u2019s dominoes that eventually determine the course of your path. I often think about if she hadn\u2019t seen the latent love I had for the language and my aptitude for it, I\u2019d possibly be an engineer with an <\/span>MBA degree<\/span><\/a> stuck at a dead-end nine-to-five management job with no idea about <\/span>Shakespeare<\/span><\/a> or Shelley. <\/span>\n\nThe theme of my story, then, is not exclusively mine. It belongs as much to my tuition teacher. It\u2019s a demonstration of the immense power teachers wield in fulfilling the lives of their <\/span>students<\/span><\/a>. <\/span>\n\nIn her autobiography <\/span>I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings<\/span><\/i>, Maya Angelou points out the tremendous influence her teacher, a certain Mrs Bertha Flowers, had on her brothers and her. Mrs Flowers not only shared\u00a0<\/span>books<\/span><\/a> with Angelou but also encouraged her to give voice to her ideas. <\/span>\n\nTo Angelou\u2019s Mrs Flowers, was Oprah\u2019s Mrs Duncan. About the teacher, Oprah <\/span>writes<\/span><\/a>, \u201cOne of the defining moments of my life came in fourth grade \u2013 the year I was a student in Mrs Duncan\u2019s class at Wharton Elementary School in Nashville. For the first time, I wasn\u2019t afraid to be smart, and she often stayed after <\/span>school<\/span><\/a> to work with me. I thought I would one day become a fourth-grade teacher.\u201d Look how that turned out. \u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\n\nYears later, producers surprised Oprah by bringing Mrs Duncan on as the guest on her show. \u201cI hadn\u2019t seen her since grade school, and suddenly, I\u2019m reading the teleprompter: \u2018Welcome, Mary Duncan.\u2019 Mrs Duncan had a name! As a child, I hadn\u2019t even considered that Mrs Duncan might have had a life beyond our class.\u201d <\/span>\n\nWhat Oprah said has remained with me. For all that our <\/span>teachers<\/span><\/a> do for us, we waste no time to award them with epithets, often unfairly. We pass judgments without thinking of them as individuals. And we spare little thought for them, other than on Teachers\u2019 Day maybe. \u00a0<\/span>\n\nWhat we are today is a culmination of what we\u2019ve learnt by ourselves and what we\u2019ve been taught. And all it really takes is one teacher, one person to believe in us. Like Oprah\u2019s Mrs Duncan, I don\u2019t know much about Mrs Menon. Other than the fact that she changed my life. <\/span>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When my parents expected me to pursue medicine, my tuition teacher pointed out to my mother that I had a flair for English. Today, I find myself in this beautiful place in life where I tell stories for a living. It\u2019s true: All it takes is one person to believe in you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":218,"featured_media":3280,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[1225,4219,1739,4228,6394,1741],"class_list":["post-3279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pov","tag-childhood","tag-education","tag-school","tag-students","tag-teachers","tag-teachers-day"],"yoast_head":"\nIt Takes Just One Teacher To Change Your Life<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"When my parents expected me to pursue medicine, my tuition teacher pointed out to my mother that I had a flair for English. 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