A TEACHER'S LAST WORDS IN A CLASS

Last year on 5 September, one of my favourite teachers came to class and obviously we didn’t let her teach that day, so she decided to tell us a tale.

We all were super tensed because our board exams were round the corner and everyone was under a lot of pressure.

She: “Class! Listen.

Three more months from now, you will be out in the sky on your own like a bird.

[Class started chattering. All of us thought she would lecture us about how hard life gets after school and all. Every teacher was doing that lately.]

But she had something else to say. I still remember this in her voice.

She continued

Imagine there are two birds, a yellow one and a blue one.

The yellow bird is sitting on the ground whereas that blue one is sitting on a tree branch.

Even though the yellow one is beneath the blue one at this point of time it doesn’t mean that it cannot reach the top of the tree ever.

Now imagine, all of you who are not able to score good marks are the yellow bird while the ones getting good marks are the blue one. And that branch is your dream college.

It may seem that the bluebird has achieved a lot just because it has reached the branch and that other birds will praise it more but it doesn’t mean that it has won over everything.

While the yellow bird, who may be below it , doesn’t mean that it can’t go above it. Maybe the yellow bird couldn’t reach the tree branch at this time but it could reach the top of the highest tree? Maybe it could not reach the branch of this tree but it could reach the branch of another? Because there are infinite trees(opportunities) in the forest.

Children, it doesn’t matter if you score a 45% or a 95% in boards, the only thing that matters is that you learn to fly.

The whole class had a pin drop silence.

Where every teacher and parents were taunting and pressurising us to get 90+ marks in boards, she just proved them all wrong within 5 minutes.

She told us how she failed in her 8th standard and how she overcame it, how she didn’t like studying but loved English and how she read novels during her exams. How some children can’t score marks even after giving their 100% but end up being very successful.