There is no denying that students have a fascination with personal details about their teachers, and age, especially, seems to capture the wonder of students of any age, and in any country. I have countless anecdotes about my age, mostly my own regrets, when a student asks how old I am, and I ask them how old they think.
In fact, there is no more humbling experience than asking a child for an honest opinion, and this is perhaps my favourite instance of that. Early in my teaching career, I worked as a cover supervisor in a school. I was covering a class I didn’t usually teach, and about halfway through the lesson, a timid hand was raised. The student asked, with a genuinely inquisitive tone:
“Did you ever get to meet Queen Victoria?”
I stared witheringly at the child and answered very diplomatically with a simple “no”, but alas, there was to be a follow-up, a double down, a final blow.
“Is that because you are poor?”
We did have the teaching moment about how old I am, when Queen Victoria reigned, and a little segue about poverty.
The class was a maths class.
[Photo by Atharva Sune]