Denied three times!

As an educator, I do not know if you ever had faced the embarrassment of a student denying that you were his teacher a few years ago. In that hilarious moment of denial, I felt like Jesus Christ, not because I had the foresight to predict such a reaction few years later but because I found myself in his situation of being denied. Now you might think that I am blaspheming. Let me just remind you of a verse from Matthew Chapter 26 which goes like this, “Truly I tell you, Jesus declared,”- this very night before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times”.  I waited for him to deny that I used to be his English teacher three times before I decided to break the awkwardness by rustling the pages of his memory. I pointed out how his challenging patterns of behaviour had rubbed me on the wrong side often when he was a student of the top class in Year 9. Even though he had an expressionless face, it was obvious that he was cornered and I basked in that moment of glory. However, I was piqued by curiosity as to what produced such a denial. Being the teacher of the top class, I was strict, the tasks given were of the higher order thinking kind, and I wondered if being in a class where he had struggled to compete with other high achievers had produced such negative emotions.  Alternatively, it could be that he was just being an adolescent, who attached more significance to popularity than acknowledging the fact that the skills he is proud of today is the result of the efforts of many teachers. On the other hand, it could have just been an attempt to cover his tracks before his peers.