LIFESTAMPS ... lifelong lessons: SILENT DARE

If my memory serves me right, it was my first year as a lecturer and I was given a Remedial class to handle. The classroom was a hall and the number of students were scary. I got to the front of the class and I knew it wasn’t going to be easy adjusting to this kind of population but I loved to teach and before long I was lost in the euphoria of sharing my knowledge of computers. Initially it was a tussle though.

The semester ran into weeks and soon

we had our first test. In no time I was done with the marking and I handed the students back their scripts. I retained the scripts that had less than a certain mark. I needed to see them and ask them what the problem was. I didn’t like my students to fail and the only way I could help some of them was to caution them early or call their attention to weak scores that may accumulate.

I looked through the withheld scripts and I noticed that the class representative's script was included. Instantly, I was overtaken with a slight disgust. I asked him to stand to his feet and in the presence of his mates told him that a leader is supposed to be a model for those he leads. I told him he didn’t do well and from that day hence forth he was to stop sitting under a particular fan in the classroom which had become his permanent position. I also told him to always write his name the last in the attendance sheet because he always appeared first and most times never cared who else wrote and who didn’t. I told him that a leader should act more responsible than he was acting. I cautioned others too but I was particular about him. Chiefly, because he was a leader in the class and not necessarily because of his personality.

After the class, a number of students wanted to see me and he was one of them. He apologized for what he felt he had done wrong and told me that he would do well in my next test. I shrugged him off believing that he was still recovering from the effect of the public caution. I attended to others and left.

The second test came quickly and in my usual way of cautioning I withheld the scripts of those that needed to be cautioned and in the same vein I celebrated those that were exceptional. I checked through the scripts of those who scored tops and to my utmost surprise the class representative had a total of nineteen (19) marks on his script. Was I the one that marked his script or did something go wrong somewhere? He lost out from clenching the whole marks by just a mark and it wasn’t a grievous mistake. I was impressed.

I asked him to stand up again in the class and the class already assumed he was done for. I told him he had redeemed himself and he had merited his office as a leader once again. He had dared me and went ahead to fulfill the dare to give glorious advantage. We became friends from then onwards. He was a good student but I never could have seen it if I had judged him based on his first test or rather if I hadn’t cautioned him and appealed to the genius within him.

It reminds me of my chemistry teacher in secondary school. I was in senior secondary three then and as he thought us in the laboratory my mind had strayed, probably on some virtual projects or plans I had to carry out. I was a constant day dreamer, I loved to dream about things and projects and build them in my head until I had the resources to make them materialize in reality. The teacher had pointed at me to answer a question and I was lost. I didn’t even hear him talking. I was nudged to reality and my classmates watched as I stood up to answer a question I didn’t even hear less know. I stared at him. He knew I had been lost and his vituperations came straight at me.

“It is people like you that come all the way here to waste their father’s money”

That was a stinger! My father’s money? Who told him my father was my sponsor and even if he was, does not answering a question amount to wasting an already paid school fees? Well, I actually didn’t hear the question if not I could have answered it, rightly or wrongly, I can’t say anyway. My teacher was not waiting to hear the answer, he wanted to prove that my mind had soared out of the class and he was right. He embarrassed me that day and I did not recover easy. I missed my lunch that afternoon as I brooded over his words that had cut me deep. I grabbed a copy of ABABIO and I began to read. Some of my mates saw me and assumed rightly that the scene in class was responsible for my new found diligence. They mocked me and I tried to tell them that it wasn’t, I just needed to read. You and I know they were right.

Years later I returned for my WASSCE result and coincidentally met my chemistry teacher on the way as I walked with my dad. He looked and recognized me and asked me how my result was. I didn’t answer him.

I reached out and gave him a copy of my statement of result and he looked at it, then back at me. He stretched forth his hand and gave me a solid handshake. I could see confidence and satisfaction written all over his face. He said I made him proud. I smiled. If only he knew what was going on in my mind!

I was happy that I had a fantastic result but I guess I was happier that I had proven him wrong and one question I would have liked him to answer was this…I know you already know the question.

“Who was it again, that was here to waste his father’s money?”

I felt like the prefect I never was in school. I had gait in my steps. I walked heads taller than I had been before I saw my result. I was proud of my success and the outright albeit public denunciation of that act that almost defamed my personal academic standing. I had called his bluff and the silent dare has been done.

The class representative years later approached me with a few of his friends and they asked to be taught how to program. I sat in my house and had a few paid contact sessions with them and let them free. They weren’t happy that I didn’t teach them some parts of the course they so badly needed to learn but I told them what I had given them was enough to help them learn anything they wanted. I was right. Before the end of the semester in which I taught them programming, they had written over twenty (20) programs or software that embedded the principle I refused to teach them. They had lived up to expectation, again!

Today as I speak to you, that class rep. has become a better programmer and had started to make a life out of it. We communicate one in a while and I can hear the confidence in his voice and the humility that growth had taught him. To say the least, I am proud of him and though I have audibly told him that, giving him attention when I can is a pointer that he isn’t the person I met in Remedials years ago.

We have the capacity to live beyond our perceived state and the mould that society and situations have fashioned for us. We may not be the others we envy but I can assure you that sometimes until you call someone’s bluff you wouldn’t know how much you embody.