Vishü Rita Krocha
Kohima | September 4
Beyond the transmission of knowledge, teachers touch millions of lives by sparking curiosity and love for learning in their students. They also act as role models even as they go beyond classroom teaching to impart life skills and values, and inspire dreams and confidence in children.
This year, Teacher's Day is being celebrated under the theme, “Inspiring the Next Generation of Learners.” Translating this theme into action, teaching is a responsibility that Viseno Yalietsu Meyase carries out with passion in grooming a new generation. At Government Primary School, Sovima F in Chümoukedima where she currently teaches, most students are underprivileged children, whose parents are daily wage earners and barely have time to look at the performance of their children in school.
This is where one of the biggest challenges lies, the primary mathematics teacher pointed out. “There are several instances of these children forgetting to do their homework. Sometimes they would show up late to school because a cow has died or a goat got sick and they are helping their parents,” she related.
However, fully understanding their situation at home, she and her colleagues would pay extra attention to these students by helping them in the subjects they are weak in or even supplying them with pencils or other study materials they are not able to afford. “It's not only education but we have to understand their background before teaching them,” she articulated.
With over 20 years of experience in the field of teaching, Viseno Yalietsu Meyase has always had a heart for teaching children at the primary level.
What makes teaching more meaningful to her is being able to impart to the children not only bookish knowledge but also “life values and skills, discipline, moral values, punctuality, and cleanliness” as she put it. “As a teacher, it is most satisfying when your students enjoy your classes and understand your teachings,” she added.
Connecting a subject to everyday life
“When I was in Class 2, there was this teacher who was so motherly. She was not just a teacher, but an inspiration and that special connection I felt for teaching as a young boy made me think that if I ever become a teacher, I would just not 'generally' teach.”
Not soon after, Joachim Chawang became a teacher. “After I finished my class 10, my principal took me to one school and said, there's no teacher,” he recalled. That was how he began teaching at St. Mary School in Lozaphuhu under Phek district.
Subsequently, he pursued his higher education from St Joseph's College Jakhama and Loyola College, Chennai. Formally, his teaching pursuit began at Salesian College in Dimapur where he taught Philosophy for 6 years.
In 2011, he moved to Kohima and joined Christ King Higher Secondary School, where he currently teaches Political Science for Classes 11 and 12 and English & Alternative English for Classes 9 and 10. Interestingly, few principals of the school had also once been his students at Salesian College.
In a college, he observed that, “the students are more mature, and they are able to understand. But in school, we have to really get down to the level of their understanding.”
“The difference is that you have to come down to the grassroots,” he pointed out.
He also underscored that the role of a teacher is to connect even while emphasising the need “to connect subjects whether it is Science or English, to everyday life.” He further maintained that teaching is not just about bookish knowledge but teaching the class with life experience. “Even value, if you can relate it to a subject. I always tell my students that if they have come to school, they should not go back without learning at least one thing. It could be one new word, one sentence, but let it not go to waste,” he underlined.
He strongly felt that a teacher should be able to impart some of life's values through the textbooks whether it is the Science subject or mathematics. In this age of technology where one can get everything from the internet, he also advises students by saying that if they are only looking for bookish knowledge, they don't have to come to school.
Joachim Chawang is carrying forward his desire and passion for teaching and finds it most gratifying when a student who was initially not interested in a particular subject, comes and tells him- “Sir, because of you, I have taken up Political Science as honours.” Such outcomes, he believes, are indications that he has made a difference in somebody's life as a teacher.
