Please Don’t Wish Me a Happy Teachers’ Day

Every year, on 5 September, India celebrates Teachers’ Day in memory of Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, the former President of India who is widely remembered as a great teacher, philosopher and academic. This post, however, is not about Dr. Radhakrishnan. It is about the tens of thousands of teachers across the country who walk into classrooms every day, prepare lessons, read, research, assess, give feedback, attend meetings, respond to parents, manage adolescents, negotiate institutional expectations and then return the next morning to do it all over again.

And, frankly, I have a small request this Teachers’ Day: please don't wish me.

Teachers’ Day, much like Women's Day, Father's Day or Mother's Day, has become highly romanticised. Flowers appear, greeting cards circulate, social media fills up with photographs of teachers and students, and WhatsApp becomes a particularly dangerous place to be. Messages about the nobility of teaching, the sacred relationship between teacher and student and the transformative power of education arrive from people you haven't spoken to in years. I sometimes think WhatsApp should be monetised specifically on Teachers’ Day so that people have to pay before sending me another forwarded message. Perhaps that would finally bring some discipline to the occasion.

What a nauseating pile of dung!

But beneath the sarcasm is a serious point. I don't particularly need to be wished. I don't need to be worshipped. I don't even particularly need to be respected in the sentimental sense in which the word is usually used on Teachers’ Day. What I need is to be trusted as a professional.

If you are my student, for instance, the best thing you can do for me on Teachers’ Day is not send me a message. Come to my class and do your best. Read what I have asked you to read. Listen. Think. Ask questions. Challenge an idea when you have a reason to challenge it. Write something interesting. Take the feedback I have given you seriously and try to improve. That is a far more meaningful acknowledgement of my work than a "Happy Teachers’ Day, Sir!" sent at 7:43 in the morning.

I spend a considerable amount of time preparing for my classes. There is reading involved, there is research, there are materials to be created, slides to be revisited, activities to be designed, questions to be formulated and, eventually, student work to be read and responded to. I often put in an hour simply preparing for the next day's classes, apart from the considerable work that happens outside that preparation. So if I walk into a classroom having put that effort into a lesson, the least I expect is that the students in front of me will make a corresponding effort to participate in it. If they cannot, then I would rather they excuse themselves from the lesson than sit there and disrupt the learning of everyone else. That isn't about demanding obedience. It is about recognising that a classroom is a shared space, and everyone's time matters.

In fact, I would much rather have a student disagree with me than blindly agree with me because I happen to be the teacher. A good classroom is not a place where the teacher is treated as an unquestionable authority. It is a place where ideas are tested, questioned and sometimes rejected. I don't need students to believe that everything I say is correct. I need them to take the intellectual work of the classroom seriously. There is a difference between respect and reverence, and I have very little interest in the latter.

If you are a fellow teacher, I expect even less. Leave me be, and I will leave you be. We can smile warmly at each other during tea breaks and corridor walks, exchange a few words about our classes, complain about the latest meeting and perhaps occasionally help each other when help is genuinely needed. That, to me, is perfectly good professional collegiality. We don't need to constantly demonstrate how much we admire each other, nor do we need to interfere in each other's classrooms under the guise of professional concern. Sometimes the greatest professional courtesy you can extend to another teacher is simply to trust that they know what they are doing.

This becomes slightly more complicated when we talk about school administrators. If you are an administrator with a background in my subject, I will listen to your suggestions. I may or may not implement them, because ultimately I will have to make my own professional judgement, but I will certainly listen. If you have taught the subjects that I have spent the last fifteen years teaching, learning and working on, then you have an understanding of the complexities of the classroom that I can respect, even when we disagree.

What I find considerably more difficult to accept is being instructed on how to teach my subject by someone who has never actually taught it. This is not an argument against administrative leadership. Schools need good administrators, and good administrators can make an enormous difference to the quality of a school. But administrative authority and subject expertise are not the same thing. The fact that someone occupies a more senior position in the organisational hierarchy does not automatically make that person a better English teacher, historian, mathematician, scientist or artist.

If I have spent fifteen years developing my subject knowledge, and if I spend an hour every day preparing for the following day's lessons—reading, making materials, revisiting slides, thinking about student responses, designing activities, giving feedback and constantly trying to improve my practice—I find it difficult to accept the assumption that someone who has not done that work somehow knows my subject better simply because they occupy a higher position in the institution. If you do believe that your position automatically makes you better at my subject, be prepared for some resistance. Depending on the nature of the conversation, that resistance may take the form of disagreement, sarcasm, scoffing or, on particularly unfortunate days, a mildly insulting remark. Of course, if you are sitting comfortably in your office while this happens, there is always the possibility that my sarcasm will float over your head. In which case, for the sake of institutional harmony, we can simply agree that the conversation never happened.

The larger issue, however, is not about my personality or my willingness to accept criticism. Teachers absolutely should be open to criticism. We make mistakes. We develop blind spots. We sometimes become complacent. We can teach badly. We can misread students. We can rely too heavily on methods that once worked but no longer do. We need professional development, observation, feedback and challenge. None of that is in question. What I question is the assumption that every form of intervention is valuable simply because it comes from someone higher up the organisational ladder. If we genuinely believe that teachers are professionals, then professional expertise has to mean something.

And that brings me to school management. By the time you have hired me, you have already made a decision about my professional competence. Perhaps I have gone through three or four rounds of interviews. Perhaps I have met the Head of Department, the Principal, the Academic Director and eventually someone at the very top of the organisation. You have looked at my academic qualifications. You have considered my experience. You may have spoken to my previous colleagues, coordinators or supervisors. You have examined my CV, my credentials and my professional history. After all of that, you decided to employ me.

So, if you are still curious about the quality of my teaching after I have joined the school, there is actually a very simple way of finding out: ask the students.

Take students from the classes I teach and ask them what happens in those classrooms. Do they understand what they are learning? Do they feel challenged? Do they feel heard? Do they think their teacher knows the subject? Do they receive useful feedback? Are they encouraged to think independently? Do they feel that the classroom is a place where they can ask questions and disagree? Are they learning? You may not always like what the students tell you, but perhaps that is precisely why you should ask them. There is no feedback more immediate, more relevant or more revealing about classroom practice than the experience of the people actually sitting in the classroom.

URGHH! WHAT BULLSHIT!

This is also why I find the idea of "pampering" teachers slightly uncomfortable. Teachers’ Day often creates the impression that teachers are a special class of people who need to be showered with affection once a year. I don't think that is what most good teachers need. We need time. We need time to prepare, to read, to assess, to think, to speak to students, to collaborate with colleagues and to improve our subject knowledge. We need reasonable workloads. We need competent leadership. We need meaningful professional development rather than workshops that exist simply because someone needs to tick a box. We need clear expectations. And above all, we need professional autonomy and trust.

If you hire an expert and then spend the next year micromanaging that expert into doing the job you hired them to do, something has gone wrong with the system. Hire good teachers. Give them the resources they need. Give them time. Give them sensible boundaries. Listen to them. Challenge them when necessary. Hold them accountable when they fall short. But then let them teach.

Because something quite remarkable happens when you do that: teachers generally take care of students. And when teachers are able to take care of students properly, students flourish. When students flourish, institutions flourish. It is not a particularly complicated equation.

And finally, to students: be nice to your teachers. You don't have to worship them either. Not every teacher you meet will be brilliant. Some will be extraordinary. Some will be mediocre. Some will be difficult. Some may completely change your life, while others you will forget a few years after leaving school. That is simply how life works. But build relationships with your teachers. Talk to them. Ask questions. Tell them when you don't understand something. Tell them when you disagree. Allow them to know you as a person rather than simply as a name on a register. Most importantly, don't disrespect them. Respect does not mean obedience, fear or unquestioning agreement. It simply means recognising that there is another human being in the room who is trying to do a job, and that their time, effort and dignity matter.

If you give a teacher that much, most decent teachers will give you considerably more in return.

So this Teachers’ Day, please don't worship us. Don't romanticise us. Don't reduce the profession to flowers, chocolates, greeting cards and inspirational quotations about teachers being candles who illuminate the world. And, please, for the love of all that is good, don't forward me another WhatsApp message beginning with "A teacher is like a candle..."

Instead, do something considerably more meaningful.

Trust us. Respect our expertise. Give us room to teach. Give us the time and resources to do it well. And then hold us accountable for doing it.

That, I think, would be a much better way of celebrating Teachers’ Day. #TeachersDay #TeacherAutonomy #TrustTeachers #TeachingProfession #EducationMatters #TeachersOfIndia #EducationLeadership #TeacherVoice #TeachersNeedTrust #RethinkingEducation #TeachingIsAProfession #IndianEducation #TeachersPerspective #EducationReform #TeachersMatter