It is Teacher’s Day tomorrow. As long as I was in school, it just meant a day when kids get to have fun in school without being terrorised by teachers in the usual way. But now at 27, as I think about it, a few things come to mind. Long ago when I was going through a reading-self-help-books phase, I came across something that said “if you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss”. Years later, when I got a boss and I thought of it, I realised for me, my bosses have been my teachers more than the individuals who taught at the schools I studied in, as those teachers seemed to get more of a power-trip through their authority over their students than anything else.

If I have to compare, my bosses have always played on my strengths and enabled me to build on my strengths and critiqued me on my weaknesses by telling me what to do, which was in stark contrast to the way my teachers in school behaved with me, writing me off on my weaknesses and completely ignoring my strengths.

For example, my English teachers were always bad-tripping on my poor penmanship instead of focusing on my ability to articulate and my language. The irony is, I am a professional writer now. My Telugu teachers always said “your dad is such a big figure in Telugu but you aren’t good at this” and insulted and humiliated me with their favorite “pandita putra parama suntha”, instead of answering my questions (which should have actually told them of my interest in learning).

Looking back and thinking about it, I feel it is a result of the educational system that’s in place in conjunction to letting every idiot join a school or a college as a teacher without judging them on their capability of being able to handle, guide and nurture children. While not all of my teachers in school were bad, in fact some were very supportive and in a way, I really owe my career in writing to Malathi Nagarajan, a teacher in my 10th, most of them just knew their subject and nothing else. I believe a system should be put in place to identify their abilities to handle children and extensive training should be given before unleashing them on young ones. 

The rant aside, if I were to talk about the ones who actually taught me, my biggest teacher has been the Internet. Most of what I know, I have learnt through the thousands of hours of endless reading online. 

Apart from that, my bosses have been my greatest teachers. If I have to list out, I can clearly tell what I learnt from the various bosses I’ve had. I learnt the nuances of writing digital content from Salahuddin and Siddharth in my first job. I learnt how not to be as a team-lead and the nuances of handling people at a workplace from my boss at the first newspaper that I worked at. I learnt how to pick stories in a newspaper from my senior Samyuktha at that same newspaper. My startup bosses Jitendra and Charan taught me how to prioritise things, taught me efficiency, taught me to use my strengths more effectively, gave me opportunities to lead, gave me opportunities to discover my potential in aspects that I never even thought about. My boss Srinivas Reddy at Telangana Today taught me a lot about writing for a specific audience, making me learn a lot more though I felt I knew it all. My senior and mentor Lalith at Telangana Today taught me to be a better journalist. 

What’s common to all of these people? They focused on building on my strengths and working on my weaknesses in a proper manner. They gave me opportunities to grow instead of just writing me off on my weaknesses.  

If you are reading this and you aspire to teach someone, please make sure you do the same...