Moonlight, Noise, and Beethoven in the Educational Wilderness - A Look Back!

Last evening, while gazing upon the Hyderabad skyline from my window, I found myself momentarily arrested by the sight of a crescent moon suspended delicately above the city. It was one of those rare evenings when the heavens briefly forgive urban planning. The moon floated there with old world serenity while beneath it rose the contemporary ambitions of mankind in concrete, glass, and questionable architectural confidence. Cranes stood like mechanical giraffes. Apartment towers blinked with the enthusiasm of overachieving LED salesmen. Somewhere in the distance, a man was probably drilling a wall at 10:47 PM because civilization, apparently, must never rest.

Naturally, I attempted to photograph the moon.

Like every citizen of the digital republic, I first relied upon my phone camera, that celebrated instrument of modern deception which promises cinematic brilliance and delivers, under low light conditions, something resembling hastily captured evidence submitted to a Paranormal WhatsApp group run my mid-50 uncles. The moon appeared not as celestial poetry but as a mildly distressed white blob floating above electrical wires. So, I did what pride eventually compels every amateur photographer to do. I brought out the DSLR.

Now the DSLR had not been touched in months. The last time I touched it was in January when I went for a trip with my friends. And what fascinated me was not that I had forgotten photography, but that I had forgotten the quiet discipline that photography demands. The humility of ISO. The diplomacy of aperture. The endlessly temperamental negotiations between shutter speed and available light. One does not simply capture darkness. One must first understand it. As I stood there adjusting settings I once knew instinctively, I realised that the past academic year had produced in me a remarkably similar sensation.

Before joining Manchester Global School, I had spent nearly a year away from properly teaching Language and Literature and Theory of Knowledge. Returning to those classrooms felt somewhat like an amphibian being politely informed that it must now flourish in a desert ecosystem. Survival remained technically possible, but elegance suffered greatly. That interruption, however, did not happen in a vacuum.

After leaving a grand institution like Oakridge, for reasons bordering on sheer adventurism, I had joined a school that was run like the pet project of a spoiled brat. There was no real education happening there. The director herself appeared rather clueless about both life and education in general and had handed the steering control to a woman whom I would hesitate to trust with even a countryside Kirana store. The remaining power holders were semi-literate individuals carrying God complexes while remaining entirely devoted to serving “Ma’am”, who continuously projected herself upon paid platforms under the glorious designation of “educator”. Her arsenal consisted largely of dubious qualifications from a university somewhere in the American wilderness which, upon my own unfortunate research expedition, appeared perfectly willing to distribute degrees to anyone patient enough to linger around the premises. Absolute buffoonery, I discovered, often travels hand in hand with authority.

Eventually, much like Jonathan Harker escaping Castle Dracula, I escaped too through a narrow but fortunate window of opportunity.

“Ma’am” was upset. "HOS” was upset. I gave precisely zero fucks about either reaction. Predictably, there was slander. There was whispering. There were attempts at reputational vandalism conducted with all the sophistication of badly written reality television.

Thankfully, my reputation as a genuine educator became my saviour.

And perhaps that is why this year at Manchester Global School felt restorative. Returning to Language and Literature and Theory of Knowledge after that experience felt like an amphibian rediscovering water after an extended diplomatic posting in the Sahara. One remembers how to breathe again. Slowly, one remembers that teaching is not merely the transmission of information. Google can already do that with terrifying efficiency and considerably less coffee. Teaching is atmosphere. Calibration. Timing. Silence. Perspective. A classroom resembles photography far more than administration would ever like to admit. Too much interference ruins the frame. Too much ego ruins the composition. However, I would not call my experience of one year all that nice. I encountered individuals who could not construct a single meaningful claim of knowledge without leaning upon artificial intelligence like a philosophical walking stick. There were people who generated presence entirely through soundwaves rather than wisdom. Others carried astonishing levels of snobbery unsupported by any corresponding intellectual substance. Linguistic superiority complexes floated through corridors with the confidence of colonial administrators who had accidentally wandered into an IB workshop.

And yet, amidst all this institutional cacophony, grace arrived through a few students.

After a year of wrestling with what often felt impossible, I encountered something dangerously close to genuine curiosity. I watched students transform. I watched corrections produce clarity instead of resentment. I watched young minds slowly understand that criticism is not cruelty and that refinement is not oppression designed by English teachers to destroy teenage happiness. Better thinking led to better writing. Better writing led to better confidence. Those moments remain the real rewards of teaching.

People often say teaching is a thankless profession. During the early and naive years of my career, I occasionally agreed. But eventually I began asking myself a rather practical question. Why exactly do I require thanks? Gratitude is emotionally gratifying, certainly, but unless the Income Tax Department suddenly accepts appreciation as legal tender, its utility remains somewhat limited.

Respect, however, is different.

Even respect is negotiable to some extent. I have no particular desire to be worshipped like an educational demigod floating through corridors distributing rubrics and existential despair. (Just leave me fuckin' be to do my job!) But disrespect towards intelligence, especially the one faculty I genuinely consider my superpower, triggers me instantly. Disrespect towards experience does the same. Snobbery irritates me. Blatant favouritism irritates me even more. So perhaps I deserve at least a modest commemorative medal for not verbally assaulting someone this year. Though, in fairness, even if I had insulted someone properly, it might have taken them several business days to realise it. Sarcasm and uncommon words have become tragically inefficient tools in an age where comprehension itself is becoming a specialised skill.

And so, one learns restraint.

I increasingly think of educational institutions as orchestras attempting Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3. Some musicians arrive carrying years of discipline and mastery. Others arrive carrying volume. The conductor raises the baton and for one glorious second you anticipate transcendence.

Then begins the compensatory noise.

The tragedy of most institutions is not the absence of talent. Talent exists abundantly. The tragedy is the institutional tolerance for dissonance masquerading as participation. Some individuals are interested less in music than in appearing musical. Since silence exposes inadequacy, noise becomes strategy. Meetings replace melody. Terminology replaces thought. Administrative enthusiasm mistakes itself for intellectual contribution.

And yet, somehow, the symphony survives.

It survives because good musicians continue playing despite the chaos around them. They rescue collapsing passages. They adjust tempo mid performance. They carry entire movements upon exhausted shoulders while maintaining the polite fiction that the orchestra remains coherent.

Still, despite everything, I remain oddly hopeful.

Perhaps because both photography and teaching reward persistence. The eye steadies. The hand adjusts. One relearns forgotten instincts. One discovers again the precise setting necessary to let light enter properly.

And sometimes, after enough failed attempts, the moon finally appears clearly within the frame. Warning: Now that I am planning to write more for this month, I will post random things here. :P #Education #Teaching #IBDP #TheoryOfKnowledge #LanguageAndLiterature #TeachingLife #Hyderabad #Photography #Reflections #SchoolLeadership #CriticalThinking #TeachersOfLinkedIn #EducationMatters #Learning #Literature #Pedagogy #TeacherLife #AcademicLife #Beethoven #WritersOfLinkedIn