A Reflection from My Journey This Year

Throughout this year, one question kept showing up in almost every training and workshop—not as formal data, but as a lived context shared by teachers.

Nearly every batch had teachers who carried this question with them. And honestly, I never felt it was wrong. It comes from their lived experience. They are the ones who stand in classrooms every day with children. We facilitate trainings and return, leaving behind a space—one where teachers slowly feel ready to go deeper into the question, sometimes in silence, sometimes with discomfort.

The question usually sounds like this:

“The government provides meals, uniforms, textbooks, and scholarships. Still, children don’t want to come to school. Why?”

As soon as this is said, many teachers nod in agreement. As the conversation moves ahead, some add:

“Parents don’t value education.”

“They don’t understand the purpose of schooling.”

As a facilitator, I placed my own question in that space.

I said: “I agree that these provisions exist. But if children still aren’t coming to school, it means one set of needs has been met. What are the needs that remain unmet? What needs, if fulfilled, might help children come to school and not drop out?”

There was silence after this.

And then responses began to emerge—through lived experiences.

One story has stayed with me.

A teacher shared that they once asked a child to read aloud. The child was reading in a very low voice. The teacher, irritated, said, “Did you come to school without eating?”

The child, startled and anxious, replied, “Yes, sir.”

That moment changed the teacher. From that day on, they never said this to any child again. They became more self-aware—realizing they often didn’t know the condition in which a child arrived at school. Since then, they began working consciously on understanding children and their backgrounds.

Many such experiences surfaced. Gradually, the understanding deepened:

Children have needs beyond food. Their adversities are different. They don’t come to school only for meals. They seek care, affection, respect, safety, and a space where someone truly understands them. Often, they look for all of this from a teacher.

But another layer emerged as well.

When we carry the conditioning that says, “I went through similar struggles, and I still chose education,” distance begins to grow between teachers and students. Each of us has had our own adversities—but when we normalize our experiences, we also start normalizing children’s struggles. Slowly, we stop seeing children from their perspective and begin seeing them only from our own.

As educators, we need to revisit our conditioning. We need to reflect on our own journeys—on who played the role of trust, care, and love in our lives, especially during difficult moments. Those reflections matter.

Only then can we truly show up in children’s lives as empathetic adults.

Because becoming an empathetic adult takes time.

And for a child, finding even one such adult can change everything.

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