SUNDAY BYTES: Teachers’ Day – When Students Teach Their Teachers
An Afternoon with Gen Z, Familiar Ritual, Reconsidered.
Dr Fiaz Maqbool Fazili
Teachers’ Day, observed on 5th September, usually follows a familiar pattern: early greetings, nostalgic photographs, classroom memories and tributes to favourite teachers. For many of us, it has become an annual ritual—acknowledged with a smile and then quickly left behind: chalta hai.
This year was different. While preparing my weekend columns, I visited my clinic at Mubarak Hospital and its paramedical school in Hyderpora, Srinagar. Over lemon tea, the owner – a senior doctor, an old friend and almost a brother for more than five decades – invited me to a Teachers’ Day gathering. I expected formal speeches, bouquets and polite applause. Instead, the Gen Z students offered a rare glimpse into how they think.
What Students Notice
After brief introductions, the students announced two presentations about their teachers’ communication, discipline, punctuality, classroom behaviour and, above all, tolerance. They offered due respect and apologised in advance, insisting that it was “just for fun.” Yet humour often reveals truth more effectively than a lecture.
Class room from other side: A recreated scenario
In the first skit, the principal, Dr NAJ Sahib (name withheld), entered a classroom and warned a late student about punctuality and the 80 per cent attendance requirement. The students then imitated his teaching style: a lecture began with tissue, travelled through anatomy and somehow ended in the digestive system. The next day brought a quick revision and the same winding journey. Their question – “Sir, should we prepare tissue or the digestive system?”—sent the hall into laughter.
Other teachers followed: a strict disciplinarian who often cited his academic achievements and the value of hard work; a teacher who repeatedly asked students to put away their phones and complete their homework; and a coordinator juggling academics, discipline and fees. When one student blamed unfinished work on failed Wi-Fi, the response was immediate: “No excuses.”. Then entered another teacher on the scenario who is also holding responsibility of coordinator noticed a student using a phone. “What are you doing while I am talking?” she demanded.“Madam, I’m checking whether the online system works, because you just said it didn’t,” the student replied. The hall erupted. Another student asked why a one-week delay in paying fees caused such anger when their ID cards had taken six months to arrive. In earlier classrooms, such questions might have been silenced by a stern glare. Today, many teachers listen and engage—and that is the way forward. Beneath the laughter lay a serious lesson: students observe not only what teachers say, but also how they behave. They notice, remember and test our consistency.
Teaching Beyond the Syllabus in E- era; Non-bookish, untraditional , not a typo
The second presentation posed a larger question: if you were a teacher for one day, would you teach only the syllabus and textbooks, or would you also teach morality, responsibility, citizenship, respect, faith, values and guidance beyond examinations?
Watching from the front row, I reconsidered the easy description of Gen Z as distracted, impatient, undisciplined and addicted to phones. These students were teaching their teachers. Perhaps we focus too much on the device in their hands and too little on the knowledge, possibility and responsibility behind the screen.
A phone can distract, but it can also be a library, a classroom and a window to the world. It gives young people access to knowledge, cultures and opportunities once unimaginable, while also exposing them to misinformation, exploitation and abuse. Simply saying, “Stop using your phone or the internet,” is not education. The issue is not whether young people will use technology, but how they will use it.
Education Is a shared responsibility-this is what I could gather while noting some sensitive messages from Gen Education begins at home, not when a child first enters school. A mother is often the first teacher, followed by the father, family, neighbourhood, school, friends, media and society. Children are always learning; the real question is what we are teaching them. A teacher may spend six hours with a student; family influences the remaining eighteen. Society teaches through conduct, social media through repetition and technology through access. Blaming schools for everything is therefore incomplete; blaming Gen Z is easier still.
Discipline with dialogue is the most important core rethinking is the students were not rejecting discipline. They wanted clear communication and teachers who could adapt to technological change rather than merely oppose it. The old model of a teacher who enters, dictates, examines and leaves belongs to another era. The modern teacher carries a wider responsibility.
The Humility to Be Decoded and Redefined
There is humility in accepting correction. As I watched the students, I was reminded of a well-known account associated with Hazrat Umar ibn al-Khattab (RA). As Caliph, he sought to impose a restriction concerning women. A woman in the audience challenged him, pointing out that the Prophet had imposed no such restriction. Hazrat Umar listened and accepted that she had corrected him.
The power of this story lies not merely in its historical detail, but in its principle: authority does not make a person incapable of being corrected. A leader can learn from a follower, a teacher from a student, a parent from a child and an older generation from a younger one. Perhaps this is the humility our classrooms need. When I was invited to say a few words, my appreciation of the students was brief, but my reflections were not. I had gone to watch students honour their teachers. Instead, they reminded me that teachers, too, must remain willing to learn.
My thought was simple: not all hope is lost. There is light here. As the imagery of light in Surah An-Nur reminds us, once light is kindled, it spreads beyond itself. A question can ignite thought; a teacher can ignite a student; a student can inspire another. Perhaps change begins not with a flood of light, but with a small flame finding its way through a crack in the darkness.
What Hope Requires-Pick N Chose!
Hope is not simply declaring that “our children are our future” and then returning to business as usual. Real hope begins when young people are free to observe, question, challenge our contradictions, disagree respectfully and remain committed to learning. The answer is neither abandoning discipline and tradition nor idealising Gen Z, but building bridges, values and technology, discipline and dialogue; and knowledge and wisdom. The school of tomorrow cannot be built with the methods of yesterday. We need teachers who know both their subjects and their students, use technology wisely without becoming dependent on it, uphold punctuality and discipline with understanding and dignity, and correct mistakes without crushing curiosity. Above all, teachers must be humble enough to say, when necessary, “Perhaps my student has taught me something today.”
A Lesson Beyond Teachers’ Day-the home take away message. I drove back to home to put my fingers on keypad.
This Saturday, I went to the gathering expecting to hear teachers speak about teaching. Instead, I listened to students teach their teachers. What they demonstrated was far more important than a Teachers’ Day performance: observation, courage, communication and, most importantly, thought.
To Gen Z, on this Teachers’ Day, we offer not a lesson, but a hand. Understand us with caring hearts, love, patience, and mutual respect, as we learn to understand you. We may speak different languages of time, but we share the same human heart. Your questions awaken us; our experiences may guide you. Let us listen without judgement, learn without ego, and grow without leaving anyone behind. For the true light of a teacher is not in saying, “I know, “but in saying, “Let us understand each other. “May Gen X and Gen Z meet not across a generation gap, but across a bridge built with love, listening, and mutual understanding. Not all hope is lost. Perhaps it was sitting in those front rows. Hope is a promise, carried by a generation we are too quick to dismiss.
May we move forward together in His Light. By listening to Gen Z with open hearts, we discovered that light meets light—the Qur’anic idea of Noor, light upon light. To our young people: meet us with compassion and respect, and we will respond with patience and trust. Teachers wish to stand beside you—to learn, guide and grow together. You are not merely the future; you are the light already among us. This is our Noor and our promise: to move forward together, light upon light. May Allah fill our hearts with Noor—Light before us, behind us and on every side.
(STRAIGHT TALK COMMUNICATIONS EXCLUSIVE. The author is a lifelong observer of Kashmir’s social change, civic life, and intergenerational challenges.)
