The Pied Piper of 7-A

Yeah that's right two posts in a row! 

The title might intrigue you eh? Well I shall of course explain, I studied in a pretty good school in Doha,Qatar for quite a while, indeed I was sad to leave said school when I finally had to move back home but I still do cherish the memories. One of those memories I fondly remember was when I started a REVOLUTION IN MY CLASS.

 

Okay I'm being a bit too melodramatic but let me explain. Now back in my old school we had these "Value Education" periods, the idea was to guide children morally to become good,upstanding citizens of modern society. Slight problem though, it was incredibly boring to sit through and for the most part we would just goof off maybe complete some pending work(very rare) or, god forbid it... a teacher would sub in to take some "pending" portions -_-

We'd have a text which we'd read through with stories with some sort of moral in them, and we were supposed to read these drab stories and become enlightened.

Tanaka the enlightened one(for reference y'know)

And this was really the routine until 7th grade for me. 7th grade I got one of my best teachers of all time as my class teacher, for the sake of her privacy I shall call her J for the time being. J was a very sweet and extremely kind teacher, she never belittled or gave up on her students and was always willing to help us out. Now at the time V.E periods were conducted by the class teachers themselves(seems like an instant headache).

Unlike other teachers, J actually gave a damn she tried to ensure that all of us would learn that there's more to life than what was stuck in our barely opened books. Unfortunately despite her trying her best with that dross that people call a V.E textbook it was only a matter of time before she threw in the towel too. She then relegated the periods to small readings to just keep us at least involved.

One day an exercise in the book suggested that we share experiences from our life relating something I don't quite remember. J took this as a great opportunity, to get us to open up and talk more about ourselves and perhaps grow closer. She called for volunteers and unsurprisingly didn't really get any response, well until my hand was up -_-

Real time depiction of me raising my hand.

Now if you somehow did not understand yet, I was a very (still am) introverted individual, I would barely talk in class and I rarely took the initiative for well... anything. This however was a special case, you see I loved Ms J too much to see her get disappointed for the umpteenth time so I decided that I'd give it a whirl. Ms J seemed like her eyes were going to pop, she was very fond of me too but knew that I wasn't one to talk much but she gave me the go ahead and I stood infront of the class and with much deliberation and hemming and hawing I told them a cock and bull story about me and my younger brother being the best of mates(like anyone would believe that -_- ). I got a few obligatory claps and I shuffled back and found that it wasn't really too bad mainly because I didn't have to actually mug up anything. Another kid went up and gave his experience after that I decided to give it another go.

Call it intoxication of confidence or whatever you please but I decided to completely lose the formal tone and I still remember the first words I spoke that time, "So I don't know if you guys know about this but my ambition is to be a chef!". Now some of my friends maybe confused so let me clear it up, for the longest time my dream was to be a chef but eventually I learnt that cooking tea in your home and cooking in a professional kitchen was nothing alike but I was still ready to go for it but at some point with my parents pushing me to go for a med course I guess it got left behind(still love to cook).

Now back to the story, gasps went around the class a kid in the 7th grade who wants to be a chef, it isn't impossible but it was certainly quite rare. I immediately noticed that I had caught their attention, and I decided to keep on going. I told them about the first time I cooked anything- tea. I decided to make it a bit more dynamic and made them all laugh quite a bit(maybe at my stupidity but it was worth it). I made it sort of like an interactive session and I answered questions as we went along, heck even Ms J listened with rapt attention and laughed quite a bit.

To 7th grade me that meant so much, it was the first time that I was in the spotlight and not for the wrong reasons. People actually listened to me and laughed when I joked. It was the confidence boost that I never knew I needed. Ever since that day V.E classes 'Abraham's Tales of 'Ole". The entire class looked forward to what I was going to say that week and the V.E textbook lay not cared for in the bottomless pits of their bags. I sort of became a legend of sorts.

7th grade was a pivotal point of my adolescence it was when I realised that I had a certain way with words if you will, and that if I gave it my all people would actually find my sense of humour funny.

Moral of the story? Sometimes giving stuff a whirl ends up alright for you :)

Auf Wiedershen

Aby