To all the people whom I do not know & all the people who do not know me,
(I am referring to the outrage incident on a teacher who had lost her temper in the meeting room of a secondary school in Kulim, Kedah. The following text represents her in my own perspective as contrast to the Internet’s perspective.)
I am a medical student aspiring to be a doctor someday. Before this, I was a student like everyone else, what makes me different is I was fortunate enough to be a student of this wonderful teacher that I still remember dearly today. A kind, hardworking, committed teacher who has brought up this aspiring youngster, perhaps many more.
However, it breaks my heart to learn that people won’t remember her the same way as I do from now on.
I was in Form 5 when she first came in our class, English class to be exact. Her reputation preceded her. Rumours about her wrongdoings due to her mental condition, speculations about our English class going from worse to worst had long reached our ears way before she could step foot in our class. Her voice had lost to rumours in the race of speed. Before she could speak for herself, rumours had already spoken for her.
She walked in, she smiled, not knowing that we already disliked her by default. She held the chalk, she introduced herself, not knowing that we already knew her name a long time ago. Her introduction was like every other teacher, yet she had one of the friendliest smile I have ever seen. Her English is top notch. Writing wise, eloquent, crisp, professional. Speaking wise, articulate, fluent, confident. Her vast pool of vocabulary and organic use of bombastic words left us awed. Her first lesson alone had purged all the infamous stories I had heard about her, and all that was left was a strong urge to learn more of the English language, and less of what she was “well known” for.
I had many good teachers as a student, but she was one of a kind. Every essay questions she assigned to the students, she ensured that she wrote the same essay herself, before collecting 40 copies of essays from students to mark them. The level of details in her marking was astounding. Some students were weak in sentence structures, she corrected every single one of them by writing a new one on top. Our essays were always lines of blue sandwiched between lines of red. To be frank it hurt our eyes looking at our essays being brutally splurged with red ink, but somehow it warmed my heart, especially when I read the comments she carefully wrote in the bottom. Rather than a typical “well done”, “good job” or “very good”, she never failed to write us a paragraph of feedbacks and words of encouragement.
I never understood how she was willing to spend so much time on each and every exercise book, it doesn’t make sense to me, unless she doesn’t see it as time wasting in the first place. A passion of hers? Maybe nothing noble like that, perhaps she only sees her work as a responsibility she couldn’t shed as long as there are students who want to learn English in Malaysia.
Rumour’s words sparked fear among us, rumour’s words made us forgot that she is a human being with words of her own, rumour’s words didn’t let her make her own introduction. Rumours told us who she is from “what I have heard” but not who she is as a person. Rumours made us felt like we knew so much about this teacher, but we were yet to realise how little we actually know about her. We later regret for believing rumour’s false accusation, when rumour itself shows no remorse.
Looking back, it has been 4 years since I was in Form 5. After all these years, her rumours don’t seem to cease, her reputation precedes her once again, but this time in a much larger scale, from a group of 40 students to millions of strangers on the Internet. Rumours speak for her once again. She is reduced to nothing but a video in the eyes of the Internet. The number of views, shares and comments will be open to the eyes of the Internet, but her contribution, kindness and dedication are left unknown.
I have seen many teachers losing their temper in class, and trust me, the worst tantrum I have seen was never from a teacher with mental disorder. Mentally fit teachers lose their temper too. As students we are aware that they are under a colossal amount of stress, but we will never truly understand how much they must have been through as an educator. We felt helpless at times. In class we prayed for the temper to subside as soon as possible. Now that I am a young adult, I regretted for not stepping up. I regretted for not telling them: “we understand that teachers have emotions too, but we still respect you as a great teacher.”
A lot of times when people around us are distressed, we attribute them to stress, we blame them for lacking of emotional control. We choose to step aside rather than stepping up. We believe in the people in distress more than ourselves when it comes to helping people in distress. We chose to give up every opportunity to show empathy and kindness, until the day we truly needed empathy and kindness more than anything else, but when none were received, we blame God for sending us into a cruel world.
I am not here to place blame on anyone, nor am I here to talk about the education system, school’s administration or mental disorder. I am here to share my respect towards her dedication for Malaysia’s education throughout her entire life, which should not be dismissed in any way by a 3 minutes video.
Rumours don’t build reputation, respect does.
Today, the internet has won a viral video, a teacher has lost her reputation. We entertain ourselves by judging behind the digital screen, while our children risk losing a wonderful human being as their teacher.
It frightens me, that this is a price we are willing to pay for a video to go viral.
(Excerpt from a forwarded message)
