by Naomi Leveton

Created on: August 27, 2008   Last Updated: September 01, 2008

I'm not sure when I first began to see teachers as "people" and not "teachers," but it was certainly a long time ago...even before I left primary school. I am now just starting year 12, and from what I've heard, this is the point in school life where most students finally realise that the teachers they've known for the past five years do not in fact sleep in the stationary cupboard or eat breakfast, lunch and dinner in the canteen. Teachers become people who have husbands or wives or girlfriends, who do go shopping; who do, in fact have lives. Teachers become, to the students who choose to accept the fact, friends.

I've never really seen teachers as "teachers," except for the ones that scared me a little - it was sort of off putting to imagine that these terrifying creatures who screamed several times in one hour could actually have a family and a house of their own...surely they must merely live at school and come out to teach...

But, after a few weeks of knowing them, even those ones became a little less formidable. Always good to make an impression on the little year 7s. For the last couple of years, I've found I can quite happily sit down and have a conversation with a teacher and not feel uncomfortable about it...feel, even, at times, as if we were having an intelligent conversation...

It was a while back that I realised that I was different from my friends, older, more "mature" than them...even though I knew this, it still surprised me to hear some of their opinions about the matter of teachers being "people". I would mention some silly conversation I'd had with one of my teachers, and I'd get four or five shocked looks, some disapproving looks, some even scared looks and I'd say, "What? I see teachers as people!" and the response would be, "ALL of them?" And the answer is yes, I do see all of my teachers as people, because that's what they are.

Of course, we should see our teachers as people who we need to respect, but there's no harm in seeing them as friends with a slightly higher status. Personally, I think that the people who believe that teachers are people who you see in the classroom only, people who you never associate yourself with outside of school are being a bit ridiculous. They aren't going to bite, and most of them are actually quite friendly.

Perhaps it's the wrong way to go about school life, but I see one or two of my teachers as more than people - as fairly close friends. Teachers are people who come into our lives just as anyone else would, and if there's that connection that two friends feel between a student and a teacher, then it shouldn't be ignored. Those connections are far too rare to be wasted by silly beliefs that teachers live in stationary cupboards.

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