As a student of Carmel Convent School, in Jammu during my high school years, in 2000-2011, I came in contact with Sister Beena, who was popular for her cheerful and loving nature. She never had to force anything on students, as the students willingly attended her classes and listened to whatever she had to say.
Every student likes a teacher who listens and answers their questions and takes a personal interest in them. I was no different. She still remembers my name and everything I used to do in her class and any other time during school hours. As I mention about her, her chubby face, red as apple, flashes across my mental screen and she, a wonderfully energetic elderly woman, is praying in her chapel, and in the other moment, playing with kids.
Every teacher has her/his own style of delivering a lecture and the technique and strategy she used to come down to a level and make her students understand the complex things in simplistic terms left a mark on me. It was her teaching that made many of the course subjects and life-lessons, interesting and easy to understand.
Sr. Beena used to take our classes on different subjects since Upper Kindergarten. One day, in a lecture on Moral Science in Class 6th, she talked about being a good human being. Out of the thousands of lectures I have attended, since my first day of school, this lecture changed my course of life.
She talked about the difference one can make in his/her life and also impact the lives of others, by being strong, independent and having a good character. Morality, she said, adds meaning to life and gives a different kind of satisfaction and happiness. The lack of morality is what is creating chaos in the society.
Teaching in a girls’ school, she emphasized the need for inculcating these values in each girl, who can later pass it on to their families, and lay a strong foundation of morality among the society as a whole.
This has shaped a major part of my personality and outlook towards life and other people. And till date, I follow the path she showed me.
waliaharry 