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During a panel discussion on teachers’ day, we were deliberating upon the role of teachers in a world that is getting increasingly complex and capricious. When a powerful speaker asked us to remember the teachers who had impacted our formative years, we could think of very few. It was easy coming to a general consensus that the few teachers we remembered fondly were not the ones who taught us the subject content, but those who kindled our heart and mind.
Sister Seraphica taught me English in the ninth grade. Every time, she walked into the class with the magazine Reader’s Digest. She almost always began her class by reading out aloud a short story or an anecdote. In the little episodic readings, there was always a lesson to be drawn or an image to be retrieved for posterity.
As we listened in rapt attention the long and short stories, we didn’t realise that what we saw as idiosyncratic at first were actually lessons on life and not just English. She stirred our mind and appealed to our hearts. We were caught in a web of her story reading that was unwittingly shaping us on the inside. Drama, poetry, prose, grammar — all became extensions of the narratives she read to us. As other teachers worried about completing the syllabus, she seemed unperturbed. She continued to read to us from the Reader’s Digest even during the demanding days just before our exams.
This could be true for a good number of students in my class. However, I speak only for myself. I looked forward to the English class not only because the story construing made it interesting, but also because it was evident to me that she was vested in us as human beings and not just students.
I often consider sister Seraphica as the principal reason for my eventual decision to become a teacher. Years later, as I taught English to high school students, I remembered her ingenious bequest and always tried to take my students outside the confines of the subject and class, at least in spirit.
It comes as no surprise that during our discussion on teacher’s day, I thought of my grade nine English teacher and how she had played a crucial role in shaping my life. There are many teachers like her, who assiduously continue to contour young lives by exposing them to the mysteries of the heart and the mind. This is a tribute to Sister Seraphica and other crusaders of hope who don’t just tell, but show.