2 Teachers I Will Always Remember

Just got back from Penang. Damn stupid and unlucky at the same time. Halfway to Penang I did something stupid and ended up hurting the engine of my poor car. Fortunately my car was still able enough to take Princess and me back to Penang but I had to leave my car in a workshop there.

In the mean time I have to borrow another car from my Dad. A Honda Civic.... great car actually... really like it!

Anyway I was talking to Princess today about two teachers I have had in my life that I will always remember.... but not for good reasons.

Let me tell you about both of them.

1) "Selamat Pagi Datin".

The first teacher was one I had in secondary school. She only came in as a replacement teacher one day. When she walked into the class, my friend Samuel who was the class monitor shouted out the routine

"Class Stand...."

And the whole class of 40 boys got up from their seats and stood up.

Then they followed the class monitor's cue when he said

"Selamat Pagi Cikgu".

When everyone proceeded to sit down, the teacher shouted 

"SEKALI LAGI!"

Puzzled the class monitor shouted the greeting.. but a lot louder

"SELAMAT PAGI CIKGU!!!"

The whole classroom including myself echoed at the top of our lungs just in case she was upset we didn't say it loud enough at first.

Seconds later we all stood to watch her to see if we could all sit down and yet it wasn't enough.

She scolded us and made us wish her a few more times until she finally got fed up and told us to say instead

"SELAMAT PAGI DATIN!"

So we all followed her cue and finally she let us sit down.

We later found out that day that her husband is a Dato so she insists that everyone greet her as Datin... not as Cikgu.

2) "I knew you could do it"

The other teacher I will always remember is my mathematics teacher in college. Here's the story.

I didn't do Add Maths in school because knowing that I never wanted to be a Doctor, Scientist, Engineer or anything like that I decided to go into the Arts Stream instead. When I went into A-Levels though I wanted to take Maths and the first time I walked into a Maths class there I was terrified. I had never before even heard of anything like Differentiation or Integration at the point in time and the teacher was teaching it as the basics as if everyone was already supposed to know it.

Of course everyone around me was doing okay because all of them did Add Maths in school but I was completely clueless. So after the first class I went up to the teacher Miss J, and asked her for help. After she learned that I never did Add Maths she told me to drop the subject or she's pretty sure I will fail or get a C or D or something.

I refused to believe that I couldn't do it so I started taking private tuition and working very hard on my maths. Miss J wasn't much help though. Whenever I went up to her for help she would get impatient with me and say 

"I told you to drop it! You're going to fail now... nothing you can do".

On the other hand, she was really nice to a select group of A students in the class who were good in math. I don't look up to teachers like this. I mean anyone can teach students who are naturally already good in the subject.... but a teacher really proves his/her worth he/she teaches someone who is bad in the subject and guide the student to an A at the end. This teacher had no patience to do any of that.

Somewhere in the mid-term or something she gave this really hard test where almost everyone except a few people passed the test. She came up to me and said 

"I'm surprised you passed Tim".

At the end of my A-Levels I had gotten an A for Mathematics. I bumped into her in a mall with some of my friends the other day and I told her my results.

She said then

"Congrats... I always knew you could do it".

She was suddenly all nice to me and COMPLETELY ignorant to the fact that for 1 and a half years she had reminded me that I would fail or get a C at best.

I smiled out of courtesy but at the back of my head I was thinking to myself

"No thanks to you Miss J"

So these are the two teachers I will always remember in my life. I sometimes wonder if they had impacted anyone else the same way they impacted me.