Oh Dear Teacher!

This is the story of Abdullah Omar, a kampung boy who started out with almost no proficiency in English, managed to achieve the highest band (Band 9) in the ELS examinations after just one year of study on the scholarship scheme provided, a certificate that pronounced him winner of the Tun Dr Mahathir UPM-ELS Scholarship award.

“Mathematics and English were my worst subjects. I was constantly failing both and I really didn’t like the teachers. Probably they didn’t like me very much either.”

“Anyway I think on the whole I wasn’t really interested in school. That’s why I dropped out after Year Six. I preferred to lie back and float in the river behind my house.”

“I started work in a restaurant. After all, I couldn’t qualify for anything else. I was washing dishes, serving customers, collecting bills. I was the all-in-one restaurant worker. That’s where I met Dr Jaya.”

Dr Jaya was swimming against the current. There were hours and hours of prodding, nudging and elbowing Abdullah who despite all that, played truant several times and even managed to get into trouble with the law.

“Once, he simply just ran away.”

Each time the boy wanted to quit, each time he found that it was too difficult, each time he fell, there were the hands of Dr Jaya to catch hold of him, fix him up and set him back on track.
And the professor did it with the tenacity and determination of a bloodhound, every step of the way.

It is sometimes hard for us to imagine this kind of interest shown in the education of another individual, on the part of someone who is of no blood relation, and in fact an entirely different faith and race.

It is not common, this perseverance, and the investment of so much time and effort in one student’s life, despite repeated failure and many disappointments.
But what is perhaps most compelling is that there was no guarantee, no assurance at all whether all that effort was going to be worth it in the end.

And yet, there must reside in the heart of this man the very elements that define excellence in a teacher the qualities that distinguish the outstanding educator from the mediocre.

This is a teacher who knows that the act of educating is not just about the making and learning of books, but about reaching people and taking them to a higher level. And that the act of educating is about investing part of your life into someone else’s, even if you are unsure about the returns.
It is about allowing people to dream their dreams. And sometimes, it is also about the placing of dreams in the minds of people. Especially in the minds of young people who float on rivers mindlessly. People like Abdullah.

This is what teaching is all about....teachers who believe that every child is teachable.