Teachers Golden Touch: The Way to Excellence

Teachers Golden Touch: The Way to Excellence

                                     

At the time of my pre-primary school our neighbour, an old gentleman used to tell us different stories. I was impressed by learning the stories of my childhood, but still, I remember the story of the golden touch of King Midas told by the old gentleman. Midas was fond of gold and very greedy. One day, a Greek God appeared before him and guaranteed him a wish for a few good deeds without thinking, much king with us quickly wished for everything that you touched to turn to gold and immediately God granted his wish.

The king touches anything that turns into gold and he starts celebrating and enjoying as he is above the sky. Expectedly, he started to touch food and water, and his daughter turned into gold and he felt it was a wrong decision. The story's moral is that we should never be greedy because the wish to be greedy does not yield fruitful returns in the future. Generally, it is said that anything excess is dangerous.

Excess isn’t greedy

Similarly, like King Midas. I have seen and felt different stories of a golden touch right from my school days to the present. I have seen many examples where the golden touch works towards betterment, excellence, growth, development, success, achievement, and many more. I have seen a few exceptional cases where excess isn’t dangerous, excess isn’t considered as greedy. There is no limit to achieving, getting, collecting, and storing Knowledge from the person who has the golden touch and converts anything in the form of gold, not only gold but diamonds, pearls, Manik, moti, pachu, and precious assets in the form of intellect, knowledge, productivity.

Delivery of knowledge without a difference: Trust 

success is a touch of teacher, guru, shikshak, guruji, master, mentor, guide, and known by many more names. His touch to anybody who ever maybe convert them into productive. He never differentiates between colors, creed, cast, gender, rich or poor but he rationalizes giving justice to every individual of the society. Simply by his touch, the mud gets converted into a meaningful shape. He delivers knowledge, ethics, values, culture, and rituals to everyone right from birth.

My Golden Touch

I have had such a golden touch since my birth initiated by my parents. Afterward, my teachers taught me the lesson of true life. He taught me the lesson of value. He taught me the lesson of ethics. He taught me to make the impossible possible. He taught me different lessons, which make me a perfect human being, since from last many years received and am still receiving the knowledge from my guru, and as my desire increases to receive the knowledge.

The touch of my guru made me a true human being, which is the true objective of education.  He not only taught me the syllabus in the four walls of the classroom, but he also taught me the real meaning of education. He taught me many more things through his conversation. He taught me personality traits, attitude, understanding, self-respect, pride, respect for others, sports, yoga pranayama, meditation, music, painting, politics, and geography.

Creator the Teacher:

He is a true creator of the nation. He is the true pillar of the democratic country. He is the master who knows everything about everybody. He created great engineers, doctors, politicians, architects, judges, advocates, scientists, and social reformers, but not criminals is the beauty of a teacher. And of course, he created a teacher who is responsible for creating a great nation. 

Like me, millions of professionals have been learning for many more years, but still, the thrust of the knowledge, the thrust of the Shiksha, the thrust of the technology, and the thrust of the idea remain. For many more years, I have gathered many more things in the storehouse of my brain, but still, it’s empty. As I get more and more knowledge, I will be considered a great intellectual, but those who don’t receive the knowledge and are considered dumb are completely opposed to the story of King Midas.

Life is a paintbrush

Anything you store excess, maybe money, maybe a bungalow, car, bank balance, food, water, clothes, cars, property, exercise will adversely affect you. But only one thing in the universe never be considered as excess is knowledge transferred by the guru. It is said that you don’t give your paintbrush in another hand to make your painting of the future, but I am fortunate to have my paintbrush in the hands of my guru who painted my life with rainbow colors. He painted my life with the grace of accomplishment, he painted my life with colors of happiness, success, ethics, and value, and created a picture of a great human being. His words are like music which filled the gaps of sorrow and joy in my life.

गुरु ब्रम्हा गुरु विष्णू, गुरुः देवो महेश्वरा । गुरु शाक्षात परब्रम्हा तस्मै श्री गुरुवे नमः ।।

In our ancient culture, it is said that गुरु ब्रम्हा गुरु विष्णू, गुरुः देवो महेश्वरा । गुरु शाक्षात परब्रम्हा तस्मै श्री गुरुवे नमः ।।. Guru is equally treated as a Brahma, Vishnu, and Mahesh. We are enough fortunate to have a touch of Brahma, Vishnu, and Mahesh, your life will be converted into gold it’s golden touch. Many times, I have failed in my life, struggled, cried, broken, and lost confidence but I learned from my teacher's power to get off like a Phoenix bird.

The great social reformer Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar said that education is lioness milk. if you want to be powerful, learn lessons from your teacher and take education. we have seen many more cases where everything gets stolen, but there is not a single case where knowledge is stolen.

Power of the Teacher:

I have seen anything that is created by God as having an expiry, but there is no expiry for the knowledge that is delivered by the teacher. Knowledge has the power to remove poverty, inequality, gender bias, and unemployability. This power is given to us by the Golden touch of the teacher.

Teachers are the most powerful entity in the universe. Let’s take some examples, Chanakya the teacher who swore revenge and vowed to destroy the Nanda empire it’s King Dhana Nanda insulted Chanakya. Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, the teacher served as the second president of India. Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam proclaimed himself to be a teacher first before anything else was India’s missile man and the former president of India. Savitribai Phule was the first female teacher of India and a social reformer who created history for girls' education. Gautam Budh Siddharth Gautama widely known as Buddha was a spiritual leader and teacher who founded Buddhism in the 6th century. Guru Dronacharya, Rabindranath Tagore, and many teachers created history, name, and fame for the country. Teachers, powered our wings and taught us the sky is the limit, fly, fly and fly.

Modernization and Teacher

Today we are in a model global world where artificial intelligence, robots, and machine learning work, fast and efficiently. Some schools and colleges have begun the experiment using AI machines and robotic teachers in the classroom. Of course, this is a need of change and demand of the time, but robots will not by the relationship between Guru and Shishya. They don’t have the power to promote, boost, motivate, or energize students. They don’t have the emotional bonding to understand the feelings of the individual student.

परीस स्पर्श of the teacher

I have seen students collapse, break, fail, and go through depression due to different problems such as financial, personal, family, professional, social, physical, and mental but the teacher is out of the way help students to bounce back and make their journey successful. Being a teacher for the last 23 years I witnessed these types of cases and at present my students are at the top of the profession. The simple direction of the teacher converts evils to good, sad to happiness, and stones to diamonds, failure to succeed, impossible to possible is the परीस स्पर्श of the teacher. 

Similarly, I witnessed students celebrating success and excellence. The most valuable asset of the teacher is having a lot of knowledge and experience such as best to worst, light to tight, failure to success, sad to happy, ups and down, tense and relaxed, and decision making.

The teacher's experience is a real asset

 Every organization having approximately 10-50 no of teachers, may have experience of 1-30 years means they have handled thousands of students in different modes in different conditions. They may have seen successful students celebrating while breaking down, sad, stressed, ordinary, extraordinary, good, better and best, less confident, confidant, and overconfident, toppers, backbenchers, etc. This means that are have experience in handling all kinds of students for different situations. They are the powerhouse of experience with different weapons, hence able to reach out to every student at their destiny.

Student – Teacher Connectivity way to excellence

If the organizations have such wonderful teachers, why do students fail? Why are they ending their life at any level? Why are you under stress? Why are you having physical and mental instability? Why struggling to reach their dream career? In my opinion answer may be due to the no connectivity between students and teachers.

In the present scenario, students are concerned with teachers who are teaching their classes. Suppose, first-year students have 04 teachers, they will be concerned with only 04 teachers and avoid the interaction with remaining teachers who have rich experience in everything which directly and indirectly helps students' excellence. Due to ignorance, you may pay huge costs in the future. At the same time, students will join the coaching classes by paying huge fees but will not interact with teachers of their present and previous organization which is the unfortunate link between student and teacher connectivity.

 Student Excellence

Every teacher is a symbol of excellence with different skill sets and it's free. Teachers know the present, past, and future of education. He knows where it will go after 5-10 years, what changes need to be required? How will the technology impact employability? He knows what is right and wrong for the overall development of the students. He is a master of government policies, international policies, university policies, and so on.

He knows how to keep a balance between career and health. He knows how to make a plan, execution, time management, personnel traits, strengths and weaknesses, and how to overcome them. He knows the path of excellence that’s why the teacher is called the brain, golden heart, and golden touch of the organization. While interacting with the teacher within a short time you will get plenty of knowledge equal to one book. This knowledge will not be found in the book or artificial words. There is no substitute for the teacher. The teacher is a teacher.

Suggestions to improve student-teacher interaction

I would like to suggest some points to improve the interaction between teacher and student to move towards the path of excellence.

     The teacher who teaches postgraduate students must engage with all of the graduate students at least once a week or month, or vice versa.

     Assign PG students to UG faculty as mentors or the other way around.

     Plan brainstorming sessions regularly for each student.

     Hold a monthly problem-solving day where students can see any teacher with questions regarding anything from academics to personal experiences to extracurricular activities to social issues to politics.

     Launch a public discussion forum

     Set aside a day to propose research ideas

     Organize co-curricular and extracurricular activities in the truest sense

     Sincerely, start a mentor-mentee program (not for paperwork).

     Establish a dynamic and adaptable setting for communication between students and teachers.

     Generate a strong support system for the overall development of the student

     Develop the trust

     Initiate the program ‘Know My Teacher’

I sum up this thought with the stanza of a poem written by the great poet Kusumagraj “Shattered to pieces is the life Sir, but my spine still holds its might, place your hand on my back, And just say, ‘Go. Fight.’ A teacher’s touch will give us the strength to stand tall in any dire circumstance and accomplish the seemingly impossible. Teachers, your touch is golden because of this. Dear students: Get in touch with your teacher if you wish to go toward excellence.
This blog is dedicated to teachers for their endless effort to enhance both the teaching profession and the lives of their students. Specifically, my mentors helped me achieve my career and life goals.

Big Thank You Sir

                                                                                                             Dr Surendra G Gattani

                                                                                                       Professor, School of Pharmacy

                                                                                                         S.R.T.M.University, Nanded