Happy Teacher's Day!

This is a bit late for Teacher’s Day because it’s such a long article and took me sometime to finish. I initially wanted to post it in parts but decided against it.

I’m the product of an all-Malaysian education system and because of it, or should I say despite it :-p, I’ve met some really amazing teachers who’ve remained in my mind and my heart. Ok, so I’ll go out on a limb here and suggest the possibility that once upon a time, a long, long time ago, Lived-legna was a bit of a teacher’s pet. So while I liked most of my teachers and most of them liked me, there were some pretty special ones who stood out a little bit more.

The first teacher I can remember is an Indian lady who taught me when I was 6. I can’t remember her name or what she taught me and her face is a little fuzzy but there is a memory which is as clear as day to me. We were sitting on the floor around her and she was telling us a story about a visit to India. I’m sure she told us many things but the one thing that stuck with me was how she was at a restaurant and how the poor children were just happy to have the scraps of her table. Mid-year I moved to a different town so I never really remembered her all too well but years later, I found out R had been to the same school at the same time and he remembered the story too!

Next was Pn Karen Yong, my English teacher from Standard 4-6, who made me participate in every single language competition she could lay her hands on. I remember even having to go to her house, which had a huge bird cage outside, to practice for the interschool story telling competition. Pity I was already shy around strangers even then, so I’d freeze up then out of fear start blurting out my story etc. Somehow it actually worked. Works still when I read in church.

And then there was Cikgu Azme, my beloved class teacher from Standard 5 to 6. Later he taught the brat too and as a consequence his name is legend in my house. To begin with he was young and handsome. And he loved us all, like his children. He was the teacher you could ask anything. About his wife. About his car and how it worked. Anything and everything, Cikgu Azme didn’t mind. The school days after the exams, we didn’t disappear, instead we came to school where the action was – playing congkak, chess, bottle-caps and even batu seremban with Cikgu Azme. The other classes could only wish he was their teacher! Then came the dreaded UPSR. I was never big on exams, and I think my parents resigned to their fate early on, of having one bookworm but streets-smart daughter and another one in the form of the Brat who mugged and cried BEFORE exams, then scores straight A’s. She who sometimes still gets her world news in the digest form from her older sister! I didn’t have high hopes for myself either, but Cikgu Azme slave drove us to distraction. And on results day, he was beaming as we came up one by one to collect our precious little slips and in dizzying wonder hugged him. Suddenly, for the first time in my life I was a straight A student. And I know that if it had been just up to me, there was no way I would have done it. Lolo and I often talk about finding him now, almost 15 years later (yes I am that old), but he’s no longer in the same school and I’m at a loss as to how to find Cikgu Azme.

In secondary school it was again my English teacher, Mrs Teresa who inspired me in my elocution contests etc. But she also knew how to let me go when I for the millionth time froze up and decided that it wasn’t something I wanted to continue doing. Now I see her all the time in Church.

In Form 4 I changed to another school to do English Lit. and how can I ever forget my introduction into Blursih by Pn Sharifah the class teacher who also taught English. It was my first day in school and I was quaking, teenage society can be a brutal thing when from Miss Social Butterfly your status was suddenly changed to The New Girl. And she made me go up to the front of the class and READ FROM THE TEXTBOOK! I tried awkwardly to use the book to shield my face and the she asked me to PUT DOWN THE BOOK SO WE CAN ALL SEE YOUR BEAUTIFUL FACE. Ha ha. Later on, I discovered that NONE of her lessons ever involved reading from the textbook. We loved her class, we could be cheeky and naughty and she’d be twice as naughty with us! We came up with play after play, unleashing our terrible sense of humour and creativity and what a ride that was but later she would reward us for it!

Mrs David in Literature class who was also the discipline teacher. If we decided we didn't want our lesson that day we'd all start looking out of the class at the kids lolling about in the corridor. Then she'd be sufficiently distracted with them as she tried to catch them and make them go back into class. And we would be free. Surprisingly she never bothered with the layabouts if we were paying attention. When we did have our lessons, as much as we loved the reading we also hated the homework so we’d manipulate arguments and discussions about meaning or a character right until the bell rang so she wouldn’t be able to farm out extra work. It was quite an operation we had going, with the responsibility of bullshitting our way through being assigned to a different person each class. The less creative ones would midway look helplessly at the rest, and so someone else would jump up to continue. It only worked because she loved for us to discover ideas and form opinions ourselves, and you can’t blame us for milking it for all that it was worth. :-p

Although Pn Sri and Mrs George didn’t really teach me they warrant some telling about. My first assembly in the new school was so strange. It was the first one I had ever been to where you could have heard a pin-drop. But it was also the first assembly where I heard the headmistress address us as her darling children. Even the naughty boys would keep quiet and calm in the presence of Pn. Sri, it would seem that love and genuine interest had a far stronger hold than any cane ever did. Mrs George was her assistant and although she tried to be fiercer, the extent she went to was ‘Boy over there, did you have your breakfast?’ if she saw someone slacking after the bell. She even met my mum to ask about me since I was a tad sickly then and my dad was also very ill. I remember these because at the end of Pn Sri’s career we put on a massive show for her, culminating in a play in which we imitated our many teachers, I was Mrs George. We imitated them word for word, each accent, each ascribed gesture. The students loved it, and I must admit, my frozen self did too. After the play we ran to our real-life characters and apologized (smilingly). Mrs G told me that if she ever needed a replacement she’d know where to find one.

And how can I forget my tuition teacher for Accounts, a Malay man who used to live nearby and who created a miracle in my Accounts grades. I was a total wreck with numbers and my school teacher was the kind who wanted you to get tuition from her so I basically wasted my first year. The next year was an exam year so my mum sought out this man who was so patient with me. You see, my problem was having to memorise formulas when all my brain was capable of was understanding them. :-p Honestly, I never remembered my debits from my credits until he taught me WHY such and such was an asset and not a liability and vice versa. And he crammed 2 years worth of accounts into months, and from red marks I went to A’s.

Then came Samad. My sweet petite BM teacher whose name I cannot remember, she put me in plays as well, but she also put in me a love for the language that I have not lost. Who’d have thought reading the original Sejarah Melayu by Tun Seri Lanang (yes the same one in the History books) could have been so amazing and interesting? I still have and love my copy.

Mr. Leong who has since retired and become a pastor! Guess we were such devils we drove to him towards religion. Hehehe... He was good teacher but I’m ashamed to admit that we preferred guessing how many times he would say ‘isn’t it’ in a lesson. He told me early on in class, ‘You’re a smart girl but a bit lazy. Don’t waste what God has given you.’ Right on, Mr. Leong.

Tough Pn Premala, whom my classmates called my sister and made me go beg her for the extra mark that would turn our red’s in History into blues. But I’m eternally grateful for her marking us down all the while so we’d try harder. When they changed the syllabus our year w/o any textbooks, she made us individually research the topics and present them to class. God must have loved me because my bit turned out 2 essay questions and earned me my A! And truthfully, I didn’t mind looking like her at all, since she was pretty! J

Mr Dharam Prakash, the long serving headmaster who rescued me from 2 whole days in class for his retirement interview which I wrote for the school magazine. Whenever we had a free period and sometimes for lunch, we’d sneak out of school in our cars to McDonalds or other restaurants nearby. Once we stumbled into Grand City to find him there but he pretended not to see us, I think. I was the sacrificial lamb to go up to him and greet him and tell him we were out of school to copy our notes, and we were waiting for them to be ready. He smiled knowingly later we discovered he had paid for our drinks since we were too nervous to have anything else.

Mr Bala and Mr Guna (oh he was so handsome!) who were my tuition masters and provided me with all the past year questions. Honestly, past year q’s are a Malaysian students bible but unless I had them given to me I never actively sought them out. Looking back I was quite the nut-job, rollerskating through life.

My uni years saw some really good lecturers who took the time to nurture you despite having hundreds of students. It was a different ballgame and they didn’t really need to go the extra mile but a few of them did. Dr. Zin, my Dean who did me the amazing favour of helping me change my specialization in my 1^st year after I subjected him to a long and emotional plea. He made me promise to make him proud and I told him he wouldn’t regret his decision. He oversaw my final year project and the end of it reminded me of my promise and told me I had kept it.

Professor Khor who got just a few of us to participate in the Kancil Awards, I was amazed she bothered with us but it was a great experience. She even counseled a few of us about what to expect going into the working world, cautioning and yet encouraging.

Professor Ramli, the strictest lecturer on earth but he had a heart of gold. The project under his class was an exceptionally tough one for me, since only 2 out of 6 of us in the team were really on the ball. We had been forced into groups and Assam Girl and I suffered but we plodded on. I guess Prof. knew about it since he always seemed to be more forgiving when it came to us, compared to the other teams. Although the campaign and presentation itself was a success, at the end of it all was a peer-to-peer evaluation which I knew would hit us both hard since we did not disguise our frustration with the others, there had been stressful incidents. Although it was meant to be confidential and would contribute to our final grade for the paper, Assam Girl sneaked a peek at the others’ feedback forms and we thought we were doomed. Lo and behold, when the grades came out, we were vindicated. I guess he was really intuitive or at least kept a toyol. :-p

There are so many more, Pn Rafeah, who my mum said manjaed me so much I would sit on her lap and tell her stories, while waiting for my parents to pick me up from school! Hahahahahaha… I must have been a cute kid :-p Or Cikgu Taquiddin with his misai, Pn Che Wa who warned a senior who had a crush on me not to disturb her baby, Datin Paridah, always well dressed and who compressed 2 years worth of PA into 1 since our previous teacher was a total nut job, Mrs Khoo, who had a very trying time with us because as she noticed, we preferred being involved in every committee and event in school than being in class :-p and En Latiff the sports unit officer although not a teacher, taught me a lot of life lessons and how to deal with people when I was in Pesta Hoki, a student run international hockey tournament. But I'm tired of writing this and I doubt any of you will read through it all but I guess I just wanted to keep on record some of the teachers I've loved.