A teacher is witness to all permutations and combinations of emotional connections.
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It often happens that one’s profession transforms one’s view of life. All through my student life, I assumed that Parents-Teachers Meetings were about grades and the general performance of students. After all, you attend only your own session, and sometimes hear a humorous story about how a friend was in the soup. With my quick transition from the status of a university student to that of a college teacher a few years ago, little was I prepared for the unsolicited revelation of familial equations and filial tensions at P-T meetings.
Some students walk into the staffroom with full smiles and parents by their side. Irrespective of the academic and co-curricular performance of the student, it becomes quite evident that the students feel secure and loved, and share their daily experiences and feelings with parents. They light up the meeting room with their warmth and mutual respect. The parents occasionally pat their children’s back or poke fun at them. One can see that the intimacy is organic and habitual. Even as a parent may chide the student over a bad grade or bunked lectures, the light is intact in the latter’s eyes. They leave with promise of doing better the next time; I know they will, as a team.
There was an occasion a few years ago when a student walked into the meeting room with her single mother. Both their faces were dull, despite the student’s decent performance in all realms. After a brief exchange of pleasantries and general feedback, there came an avalanche of complaints and mutual accusations. The mother complained that the girl was detached and distant ever since the teenager fell in love with someone the mother did not approve of. The mother was embittered about the supposed thanklessness and selfishness of her daughter, to whom she had devoted her entire life; the girl felt suffocated by an overbearing parent and silently repressed the insecurities she felt about the absence of a father. The girl believed that voicing her true feelings and needs would only go down as ingratitude. As they left with hearts heavier than when they walked in, the girl’s performance reports lay unappreciated on the table. It would take a lot of awareness and effort for the duo to forgive, understand, and help each other heal.
Sometimes, a parent and child have a cold ocean of silence between them. I give feedback to the father and he nods, and tries to force a courteous smile on his face. I wait for the usual conversation to ensue, but awkwardly long moments pass by with no word uttered. No admonishing, no complaints, no appreciation. Nothing. Just plain silence choking the room. The student is embarrassed that the teacher can, perhaps, see why he has been precariously perching on the threshold of interpersonal communication. The teacher makes an ungainly attempt at salvaging the student’s self-respect by cracking a joke, which miserably falls flat, earning two painful smiles but no laughter.
The body language of students around their parents can be quite telling. Some children bloom in the proximity of their parents. Even the ones who are meek in class replace their usual stiff posture with a more comfortable one; a reticent student magically transforms into an articulate one. At times, it goes the other way around. I have witnessed a confident and peppy social butterfly blur into a wallflower in the presence of her mother and elder sister. We all need a nurturing ecosystem to make ourselves seen and heard.
I was touched beyond words when an accomplished woman, who had done extraordinarily well for herself, gracefully accepted the learning disability of her child. She always attended the meetings, knowing full well that the grades were going to be bad but put her arms around the girl, as she conveyed how proud she was to be the mother of such a beautiful and good-hearted child. The student left the room but the mother stayed with me for a while longer to share privately how heart-wrenching it was to watch her girl struggle for days on end in order to learn something that other children could pick up in a matter of hours. Another time, it was the father of a visually-impaired student. I have seen the Hemingwayesque grace-under-pressure in the honourable perseverance of the parents of students with disabilities.
Sometimes parents put their children under pressure by trying to vicariously live their unfulfilled aspirations through their offspring. Such dreams, when not realised, take the form of nightmarish venting of frustrations in the P-T meetings.
A teacher witnesses all permutations and combinations of emotional connections (or the lack thereof) during these meetings. As the thirty or so interactions of a single class get over, a perspicacious teacher will be equipped with enough insights to be able to empathetically re-approach the names and numbers on her class roll as complex stories of the human condition.
Published – February 16, 2025 03:22 am IST