What makes a teacher great?
Knowledge, creativity, honesty, dedication, and talent, I was thinking of as the main qualities that would make a great teacher. Still, there was something missing, I thought, as an old memory of my school days crossed my mind.
One day in the last month before final exams at my high school in Egypt, it was also the last year, a group of my class, including myself, headed to the agricultural class. By the way, it was one of optional subjects that students had to choose and attend but was not graded. Wouldn’t it be boring to learn about flowers and plants only theoretically without outdoor practical lessons? Of course it would be, but what else could we do? We attended and to make things worse, our teacher was as dull as the lesson. Nothing in her features, her style, and her voice was relating to nature and its beautiful creation.
On that day and before starting the lesson, our teacher assigned some students to do some cleaning in the class while others were instructed to make some readings in the textbook. My friend and I were choosen to wash some plastic plant pots and as I headed to do my job, my friend volunteered to wash them all. It was so kind of my friend, I thanked her and went to the table to start my reading.
A few seconds later, like a captive lion that had just escaped from its cage, our teacher was roaming all over the class searching for her prey – me. Deaf and blind , she kept asking others about me as her bloodshot eyes searching all the faces in the class though I was sitting right before her. Then, the veil on her eyes was lifted and they fixed on me as she ordered me to stand up. I did, feeling my heart would stop beating. I had no idea why she was mad at me.
‘Why didn’t you do the job I assigned you? She yelled and I told her about my friend’s offer, and even my friend, drying her hands with a towel, indicated that she was the one who wanted to do them all. But our teacher was not listening to reason or truth. She screamed while explaining how I was careless, disrespectful, and lazy student. I burst into tears for I had never been any. It wasn’t my earnest tears that had thrown cold water on our teacher’s blazing anger but a sentence uttered by one of the students.
‘You’ve gone so far, miss. You know you shouldn’t behave like that’, said one of the students. The teacher turned to the girl and looked so ashamed. She didn’t approach her because she understood well what the girl meant. Both the teacher and the student were christians, and the first impression the teacher’s behaviour has on a class of both Christian and Muslim girls was her prejudice against me as a Muslim. A few minutes later, she calmed down and asked me with a broad smile to join her and study my lesson at her own desk as if that was a great privilege.
Could her new attempt overcome my shock and my hurtful feelings toward her irrational conduct. Never.
Wisdom that’s the missing quality I was looking for and I believe a great teacher should have it.
With all the best wishes,
Nahla
Pure and Simple 