A teacher can bring to her class fearlessness & humility

I stand in front of bored teenage faces, vacant expressions that defy me to teach anything, anything that might interest them. As I rattle on rapturously about the beautiful ways of wording a description, I almost ignore somebody's barely stifled yawn. Some scribble furiously but most remain wooden, no matter what the motivation, what the inspiration, what the provocation.

This is I, the Teacher of today, whose audience is no longer enthused, despite humongous efforts by me, whose audience is jaded by the gimmicks that the world has thrown at them at such a young age and hence doesn't respond to anything now, whose audience is just a row of empty faces where digital minds are already acceleratedly thinking about the next Instagram post they will upload or the next occasion for a Snapchat message.

Teaching teenagers has never been easy. It is the age when they stand at the brink of rebellion and revolution and need the slightest opportunity for a cause. But the teenagers of today are suddenly an anomaly in the progression of human evolution- they might retort but not revolt. Perhaps, they have been exposed to so much media: movies that target them as miniature adults robbing them of their childhood, advertisements that lure them to various products making them intelligent consumers, and social media which expects of them an ability to socialise that even those much older than them can't juggle adequately.

But these teens can. These teens can be intelligent discerning consumers; they can be skilful jugglers handling multiple social media accounts expertly; they are digital citizens of the future whose adeptness at figuring out the workings of new apps is simply stunning; they are self-definers, who have figured out their identity through the multitudinous 'followers' and 'friends' and 'likes' and 'comments' that are more real today than handshakes and hugs; they are geniuses who have been watching documentaries, learning from DIY videos, and hearing of news right from the horse's mouth on Twitter; they are identity shapers who define their own idea of entertainment by following artists, singers, reviewers on Youtube or choosing what series to catch up on Netflix, through their own unenforced selection.

All of this leaves the teacher with the perplexing question - what can she teach her students that they don't already know? What can she bring to the classroom that they haven't been exposed to on some digital portal or the other? The answer is - nothing. Nothing, if you're thinking in terms of information or knowledge. What she can bring to her class is empathy - the 'I feel you, bro' attitude that binds teens to each other. She can bring to her class - discipline; they might not say it but they yearn for someone to lay down the rules strongly, so that they can break them, and at the same time be assured in the belief, with relief, that the society around them is founded upon solid principles.

She can bring to her class guidance - they might thwart this, at first, but deep down is the need to be shown pathways that have been tried and tested, so that the adventuresome among them might know what boundaries to step over, and the more docile might be assured in the sureness of a means to success.