Humility and Appreciation- Ashtalakshmi RPKM

Being humble is basically about reflecting maturity. A person who is humble deserves to be the first role model for everyone who wants to evolve into a better individual in the future, and for those who want to sculpt their personalities into something ‘good’.

Humility is the best value a student can imbibe. I, as a teacher, try my best to imbibe; some good values into my students, so as to make them understand the importance of practicing values in their day-to-day lives.

I would like to share an amazing and inspiring incident as I trudge down memory lane. It was a bright day and I could sense that my students were dreading the Monday. So I decided to make things interesting for them. 

It was their English period, and I took them to the school playground. Confusion, laced with fascination flashed through their faces, as they saw some balls scattered all over the ground. I decided to make them learn the synonyms and antonyms of some words; on the balls were written some pairs of the same (antonym on one and synonym on one). They all had to find the other pairs of each word and put the balls together. There was a time limit of 10 minutes under which they had to do the task.

I could hear excited murmurs all around me as they started to perform the task. I couldn’t believe that everyone was calmer than I had imagined them to be, the teamwork and humbleness were at their peak.

Everyone was helping each other find the pairs; if someone found one and the other found another they would shout what they found and put them together. Some students couldn’t find the pairs as they did not know their meaning, the others did not tease them for not knowing the synonyms and antonyms. I felt so proud that my students followed what I told them to, and that they were so humble with each other. The students who could not complete the task even came to me to apologize, that they would learn the topic thoroughly and wouldn’t repeat the mistakes again.

Such sincerity and humility in my students made me feel extremely proud, as I appreciated each and every one of them for the amazing achievement they made in such a small activity like this. 

I would like to share another incident that happened. It was a pleasant day, but not so pleasant for the students as I was going to distribute their answer sheets back so that they could see what mistakes they had made and how they could correct them.

I observed the students as they cross-checked their answer sheets once again, some faces looking satisfied, some disappointed, and some horrified; until one student made her way towards my table. I inquired if she was facing any problems. She told me that I had overmarked her answer sheet and that she wanted me to deduct her marks. I halted, as I looked at her in astonishment. 

I had never encountered a student coming to me to get their ‘marks’ deducted, although I had seen many trying to make them ‘increase’. I deducted the marks, and I then decided to announce what she did to the other students. The student got shy as I asked everyone to clap for her for her honesty; the student rightly deserved that. I appreciated that student once again as she went back to her seat.

I can never forget those days, when I made my students learn that being humble can make us achieve everything that we want to, including gaining love and trust from everybody who gets to encounter the values you possess.

One day I kept a glass jar in my class and asked my students to think of at least three things throughout their day that they are grateful for and the most important step that this will be repeated every day. It can be something as small as a coffee at your favourite place, or as grand as the time you spent with your friend or someone you really care about. I asked them to do this every day, write down what they are grateful for on little slips of paper and fill the jar. I told them that over time, you will find that you have a jar full of different reasons to be thankful for what you have and enjoy the life you are living. It also will cultivate a practice of expressing thanks.

Ashtalakshmi @ RPK School Moradabad
Ritu Goyal, Poonam Sharma, Meenakshi, Sonia Gupta, Tabinda Jabeen, Charu Sharma and Krishangi Sharma.