Metamorphosis of teachers

By Muqheeta Mehboob



 Talking at Madinah Public School Hyderabad on Metamorphosis of teachers

Metamorphosis of teachers

Moqheeta Mehboob

Moqheeta Mehboob

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5 articles

I am sharing a post penned by Mrs Husna Shehwar, Faculty for English/ Social Science Dept at Madina High School. She posted this on

https://www.facebook.com/profile/100063954401799/search/?q=moqheeta  on 21 June 2019 

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Better than a thousand days of diligent study, is one day with a great teacher.


Teaching being one of the noblest and most trusted professions of the world, has its own share of highs and lows. We are the bows from which the students are sent forth. As a teacher we are the most important part of a young student's life. But let's admit it, all of us, even the best, the most seasoned from amongst us, sooner or later crumble under the brutal burden of today's complicated and indifferently designed curriculum, clubbed along with other laborious activities like fashioning lesson plans, keeping pace with the syllabi, keeping up with the young generations interests in order to grasp, hook and maintain their young unwilling mind's brittle attention, scrutinizing notes, meeting deadlines, contemplating assessments and juggling about what seem to be a dozen gigs at a time! The passion for teaching and imparting knowledge loses its luster and dies a silent death somewhere among all these arduous tasks. With our creativity plummeting downwards, we end up falling prey to the much dreaded, and the least discussed, the Teacher Burnout Syndrome!

We are human after all!

But like always, our Director Mrs. Maria Tabassum came to the rescue, and like a whiff of fresh air, organized a very informative, and well timed session on "Metamorphosis of teachers" to further augment the quality of education at MHS. Arranged on Monday, the 10th of June, the session kickstarted the new academic year of 2019-20 with a bang. Conducted by the charismatic, the unassuming and the very witty and intelligent Mrs. Moqheeta Mehboob, an eminent educationalist, also owner of the Edutop Consulting, it was well worth our time.

With a unique blend of a powerful delivery and a twinkle in the eye, Mrs. Moqheeta displayed a stunning lack of unfamiliarity with the audience, as she proceeded to break the ice treating the teachers to a couple of hilarious tongue twisters, which pretty much met the purpose of fixating our undulated attention upon her till the end of the session.

Setting the pulse of the session to be breezy yet intensely gripping at the same time, the speaker stressed upon the fact that the pace of our schools today is frantic. She calculated the very little amount of time left in a child's 24 hour-day to play and explore the world- both in and out of school. Sadly, in order to meet the demand of our present education system, we unintentionally end up pushing our students beyond the permissible limits, forcing them to think and learn at higher levels, when the more basic needs are not yet met. To demonstrate the basic school needs of a child she displayed the Maslow's Hierarchy of School Needs highlighting the need for the other facets of a child's mental and physical faculties to be in sync, for the students to be available to learning whole-heartedly.

Prudently, she also made us take a trip down the memory lane, leading us to an era when we were students. She made us zero down upon our most and least favorite teachers- along with the reasons. A single deliberate question followed short lived nostalgia that kept us brooding for minutes to come- As a teacher, whom do you identify yourself with the most... your least or your most favorite teacher?

She also stressed upon the fact that we just can not follow the same outdated teaching techniques which were taught in our time. Just to drive the point home, she wittily ushered us all towards a seemingly innocent experiment. The speaker led us to collectively draw a nature scene within 30 seconds. After the time-up, we proudly held up our finished artworks, only to realize that most of our drawings were almost completely identical: snow-peaked mountains, half hidden sunrise, rivers, birds, trees, fish... the works! She left us appalled at our own levels of creativity, or rather the lack of it. She gently nudged us towards the fact that a good teacher should cardinally possess the ability to objectively guage her own strengths and drawbacks, and keep reinventing herself and spark her creativity in ways that make her a work in progress for life. Only then can we change the run-of-the-mill mindsets of the generations to come.

An eye-opening twist in the session came, when we were presented us with a set of questions requiring us to answer them in what seemed to be very inadequate time. Just a few of us could finish the task in the allotted time. The placid speaker all of a sudden started hurling abuses at us. In an unprecedented trash talk, she labelled us as slow pokes, good for nothings and hopeless, even made fun of a few of us judging us for our momentary tardiness. Did that offend us? Yes! After a while, when most of us gave up trying to live up to her expectations, she finally disclosed the purpose behind this strategically placed outburst by pointing out that its the same humiliation your students face when you have the same derogatory demeanor on a daily basis.

Jaw dropped! Lesson learnt!

The interactive fun filled session ended with a soul searching note as to where our passion for teaching lies in our spectrum of life. Is it really our calling, or a mere means of earning our livelihood? Did we willingly choose it, or circumstantially? The answers will determine if the child entrusted in our hands will turn out to be a confident achiever or a disgruntled underachiever.


The session ended with a beautiful poem, akin to a teacher's oath. Let's all read it and pledge ourselves to follow it tirelessly-


I want to teach my students how

To live life on earth

To face it struggles and it's strife

And how to improve their worth-

Not just the lessons in a book

Or how the river flows-

But how to choose the proper path

Wherever they may go.

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