Thirty pairs of eyes in a eighth grade classroom, gawking without a blink, and I forget all the mathematics I had learned relentlessly for so many years.
Oops! This is just the first school where I begin my training session. I have four more to cover in a week. The testimonials given by the five institutes will see me through as a trained teacher. I will hold a certificate to let the world know I AM A TEACHER.
While I tried to flash what remotely resembled a smile, a young man walked in and seated himself amongst the students. His stern countenance wiped the smile from my face.
The students got up and wished him ” Good Morning” on a musical note in the chorus.
‘He must be the senior mathematics teacher.’ I made a wild guess. I had met no staff member but was ushered in by a sweet young female administrative staff.
The gentleman’s presence there only escalated my anxiety. I guessed he was here to gauge my teaching methodology, and he was the one who should testify to my integrity as a teacher. In a nutshell, he was among the five who would decide my future as a teacher!
The young man borrowed the mathematics textbook from a student. I watched with bated breath as he browsed through the pages and pushed the book towards me, pointing at a particular problem.
“Let us have you solve this?” He said in a baritone voice that almost made my stomach churn.
I was awestruck and confused to see some students giggling at that point.
Armed with a graduate degree in mathematics and having gone through a vigorous teaching training program, I tried to compose myself and camouflage my tension. But the next moment, my head went blank for reasons best known to the Almighty.
If a smell characterized nervousness, I would be reeking of it. The students’ giggles only added to the palpable tension in the room, a tension that I was struggling to overcome.
Some students chuckled as I browsed through the problem. I needed to find the ages of seven people in a family, with just one person’s age given and several statistics linking everyone’s age.
Of course, it was not my first time solving such a problem. It had always sounded simple, but today was different.
Why couldn’t I assign an alphabet to each family member’s age? Once that was done, I just had to connect the dots—that’s it!
I had no idea why I was sweating inside an air-conditioned classroom. Nervously wiping my face, I began reading the problem aloud. I adopted this tactic to buy time to get over my jitteriness.
‘What if I made a mistake? What if this gentleman would find my modus operandi not up to the mark, and report that I needed to be more competent to become a higher secondary teacher?’
It was a do-or-die situation. I turned to the blackboard and began writing and talking simultaneously, determined to overcome this challenge.
“Let the nephew’s age be ‘x.'”
“Why ‘x’ and not ‘w’?” the young man quipped, and the students behaved as if this was the joke of the century.
In mathematical problems, we generally assign values like ‘x,’ ‘y,’ ‘p,’ and ‘q.’ ‘w’ was never a choice for assigning a value, not that it was barred from being used, but why was the gentleman so keen on using ‘w’?
I shrugged and began writing again. “Let the nephew’s age be ‘w’ years.'”
At that point, a female student, who looked very intelligent, walked up to me. “Madam, can I have water?” she asked. I noticed her tactfully slipping a small note on that page, which had the age problem while seeking my permission to drink water.
I nodded, and she threw a meaningful glance at me.
The following minutes took the young man in awe as he saw me solving the problem instantly. The students fully affirmed when he asked if they understood the methodology. However, the young man did not seem entirely satisfied. He scrolled through the pages of the textbook and opened another challenge for me.
Two pipes leaked at different speeds, and the problem was to find the time the pipes would individually take to fill a bucket of the given capacity.
I was no longer perturbed. I felt spring on my feet as I solved the problem. The students looked engrossed, and their smiles testified to their understanding of solving such issues. Even the man seemed pleased.
Through my peripheral vision, I glanced at the female student with gratitude.
The note she slipped gave me the confidence to explain the mathematical problems effortlessly. Despite my thorough knowledge of the subject, the note had successfully removed the mental block that had formed and hindered my brain from solving the problems in the presence of the young man with a stern face.
They were just simple words. ‘Madam, this gentleman sitting here is our physical training, sir, and is not well-versed with mathematics. The mathematics department staff has gone for a seminar today, so he has been deputed to gauge your potential as a mathematics teacher. All the best.’