Fatima tuz Zahra| English teacher Grade VI
Twenty Three. Freshly graduated. A colour-coded planner. Absolutely zero idea about adulthood.
Then came 6A, 28 girls.
What everyone fails to mention when you start teaching is the love you will have for your first batch. My 28 girls came into my life as a gift that I will forever cherish. While we did study and aced in lessons, this is not about academic learning. This is a tribute to my girls, the girls who talked to me (endlessly) about their love for makeup, k-pop, singers, art, crochet, fashion, professions, friendships and what not. They not only talked about friendship bracelets but also about things that keep you up at 2 am, things that make you anxious and things that you cannot forget. I would leave school everyday with a new story, a part of someone’s heart and honestly? That felt significant.
Each one of my girls carried something extraordinary. A shy girl that loved to write an 8 pages long narrative, a kind one that held others during their time of need, an artist who crochet, a sweet girl that made friendship bracelets, a girl that spoke so well as if it was her super power, a girl being bullied all her life and yet still chose to be kind to others, my girl that showed resilience in the times when her health was not taking her side, the girl who loved dyeing her hair and so many more gems. Twenty eight different gifts, twenty eight different worlds. My first year as a teacher was completely exhausting and overwhelming and these girls were my strength.
I have realized that there’s something about your first batch that never repeats. You love all your students but not like you loved your first ones because they will always be your first kids. The first batch meets you before you build walls, before you learn about professional boundaries and before you figure out who you are as a teacher. They get the rawest version of you, the real you and the most genuine version of you. And in return, you get theirs.
Other classes came after. Great ones. But my 6A (2024-2025) lives in my heart and will forever be special. They were 28, I was 23. Somehow, we figured life out. Together. To every teacher out there: your first batch is your origin story. Hold them gently.
And to my dearest girls, if you ever stumble across this, I hope you know that you are cherished. Not just remembered, not just thought of occasionally, but cherished. You were never just students to me. You were the reason I fell in love with teaching. On the days I doubted everything, a memory of your faces was enough to pull me back. I hope you’re kind to yourselves. I hope when the world gets heavy, you remember that somewhere, someone who watched you grow thinks the absolute world of you.
Cherished. Always. Every single one of you.