Naughty pupils make good teachers

Saturday September 26, 2009
NAVEL GAZER
By ALEXANDRA WONG

As ironic as it may sound, it’s usually the naughtiest students who make the best teachers later in life.
IT took several rounds of driving in circles before I pulled reluctantly to the roadside.
“I think I’m going to ask for directions,” I announced gruffly.
Other than a wide-eyed stare, my passengers didn’t look too surprised. After all, it was my maiden attempt at driving to Teluk Intan (TI for short). We had driven all the way from Ipoh to eat the town’s most famous culinary export — Liew Kee’s chee cheong fun.
After tasting it for the first time in March, I convinced my parents and BFF (best friend forever) Chang into joining me on a road trip. The plan was to drive two hours to TI, tuck into some freshly-made chee cheong fun, ta pau (take away) a few packets and return to Ipoh before nightfall. But you know what they say about the best-laid plans . . .
After getting through miles of highway, oil palm plantations, and bucolic kampung, I was well and truly lost. I was about to alight and pounce on a tudung-clad makcik at a roadside warung, when a sudden realisation hit me.
“Hey, doesn’t Sharmila teach here?”
Sharmila was our school’s most notorious tomboy. The kind who’d put a frog in your pocket, who’d tease you till she made you cry, and who also had legions of admirers. As a cosmic joke, the naughtiest girl in class had ended up as a teacher in this particular neck of woods.
Chang was already whipping out her phone. “What? You’re in Ipoh?”
I grabbed her phone and barked: “Are you going to be around tomorrow . . . you are? You’d better make yourself free for breakfast or I’ll march right up to your gate!” I threatened. “Do you know how long it has been since we last saw each other?”
“Easy Bunny, getting upset will age you faster. I’m still the same mah — short, cheeky and getting a bit round these days,” said Sharmila, dissolving into that oh-so-familiar cackle.
Sharmila, Sharmila.
She always knew how to get the last word in, even when she turned the joke on herself — one of her most infuriating but also endearing qualities. As I turned the car around as per her instructions, I smiled at the memories of those halcyon days; when we munched on endless slices of keropok lekor in the canteen, plied our (blushing) male biology teacher with questions about the reproductive system, and sat cross-legged on the corridor after history class, discussing how to make the world a true ZOPFAN — Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality — a cool concept we embraced fully with our idealistic young hearts.
“Hello girls!”
I lifted my head from my glass of iced coffee and came face to face with a pair of twinkling brown eyes. Sharmila was standing next to another girl who looked vaguely familiar.
“Girls, this is Jeyanthi, a junior from our school. Jeyanthi, this is Chang,” Sharmila said, by way of introduction. “Chang is very adventurous. She flew to Britain on her own and worked there for five years! And this is Bunny, who’s less adventurous, though no less dangerous. She’s a writer, so anything you say can and will be used in an article.”
I gaped stupidly at Sharmila, who responded by batting her eyelashes.
“You horrid woman,” I grumbled. “I still can’t believe that the naughtiest girl in school is a teacher!”
“I know!” she agreed heartily. “Everybody who finds out always have the same reaction. When Janet found out on FaceBook that I was a teacher, she wrote on my wall, ‘HAHAHAHAHAHAH’.”
We roared with unlady-like laughter, drawing curious stares from the next table. Years must have raced past since we girls last saw one another. Some of us had gotten married, given birth, carved niches and yet, when we got together, walls dissolved and the years melted away. We were schoolchildren all over again.
“So how does the naughtiest girl in school find teaching?” I asked curiously.
“I love my job,” she answered simply. “In a way, I think having been naughty once helps me to be a more effective teacher.”
I arched my eyebrows. “Oh? How so?”
“Well, I can communicate better with them, because I understand the underlying cause for their mischief.”
“So, O Wise One, with years of experience under your belt, can you tell me what makes a child naughty?” I teased with a wink.
“Because he or she doesn’t get enough attention at home. A child knows that if he is naughty, then he will get the attention he craves.”
Her serious response took me by surprise. Clearly, her work meant a lot to her. “I’ve always wondered,” I proceeded hesitantly, “is there really a wide spectrum of behaviour, as in the first compared to the last class? I mean, are the children who end up in the last class typically the naughtiest as well?”
“You know that Singapore movie, I Not Stupid? That’s exactly the situation in school. The children in the last classes are not stupid; they have been told so many times that they are hopeless, they begin to believe they are. When you teach, especially the last class of a school, it’s not really about teaching per se, but about instilling a sense of self-worth into them.”
“The last classes often get abandoned, even by the teachers. Many of them can’t even read or write simple passages when they reach Standard Six. Do you know what that means? It means they haven’t learnt anything at all in the six years! When you are told too many times you are worth nothing or you are not good enough to do something – what do you do? You give up.”
“Teaching requires a lot of heart and soul,” Sharmila stressed. “The problem with school is that you are dealing with such a big number, so you can’t give attention to all.”
“Can one teacher really make a difference?”
“Yes!” she replied passionately. “Let me tell you about a group of students who had to come back for extra classes. At first, they would cut classes and hang out at the local cyber café instead. So I called up their parents and told them what was going on. The parents brought the errant children to class. From then on, it was up to the teacher.”
“What do you mean by that?” I asked, perplexed.
“You have to make the lesson interesting enough to sustain their attention. At one time, I even bought ice-cream to entice them. You have to do this sort of thing, no choice. But you know what? After a while, they started coming to class of their own volition. And later, they told me, ‘Cikgu, tak payah keluar duit. Kami bayar. (Teacher, don’t use your money. We will pay)’ They pooled together their money and bought the ice-cream. They even got one for me!”
She shook her head in incredulity.
“Once you touch a student’s heart, he will be able to perform,” she continued earnestly. “They just need to know you care.”
As her eyes darkened with emotion, I thought to myself, if Mr Wee, our fearsome Additional Maths teacher, who once roared across three classrooms: “SHARMILA SIVAGNAGAM, WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?” could see her today, he would approve.
“Everybody’s worth something, eh?” I said softly.
“Yes,” she nodded. “The same formula works in every aspect of life.”
We fell quiet for awhile, each lost in our own thoughts. All too soon, our yumcha session had drawn to an end. Before she left, Sharmila surprised me by squeezing me in a tight grip, right in the middle of the coffeeshop.
“It was good meeting you again, Bunny,” she whispered. I felt tears forming. And with that, this former tomboy glided away, a vision of feminine grace in her coffee-coloured Punjabi suit.
Yes, some things have changed, I thought to myself. But some things would always be the same. Like the fact that she never failed to make me laugh, and that she was the same plucky girl with the heart of gold that I once adored to bits, and still do.
Alexandra Wong (http://bunnysprints.blogspot.com) is still an idealist at heart. All names have been changed to protect the identities of the persons in the story.