Reclaim the Joy of Teaching: Beyond Hierarchies and Burdens

A few days ago, a colleague on the National Syllabus, Textbook and Learning Committee, Diya Chatterjee, shared the words of a private school teacher from Bhopal that pierced through layers of rhetoric:

“I’m forgetting the joy I once felt in teaching, the very reason I became a teacher.”

On the eve of Teacher’s Day, these words should weigh heavily on our collective conscience. For if the joy of teaching is extinguished, the very soul of education is endangered.

The Nobility of Silence

Teaching has always been a noble calling, and perhaps its most precious honour lies in the opportunity to learn without boundaries and to witness the spark of discovery in young minds. Yet today, the spark of that learning is weighed down by multiple expectations. Teachers are asked to be an inspirational voice in the classroom, counselors for students, managers of parental concerns, masters of ever-changing technologies, and contributors to institutional demands, all at once.

Amidst this whirlwind, one vital question is often left unasked: How are teachers themselves coping? Too often, the answer comes in silence. Silence from fatigue. Silence from unacknowledged stress. Silence that risks turning a vocation of passion into a profession of transaction.

In earlier reflections, I described this as the “murder of pedagogy by hierarchy.” The danger lies not only in government apathy or commercialization, but sometimes within the very ecosystem of schools themselves. When leadership reduces mentoring to mere monitoring, when administration overshadows inspiration, and when senior colleagues lean more on authority than responsibility, the true spirit of teaching is diminished.

This is not simply about efficiency. It is about fidelity to the calling of education. Teaching is not meant to be policed, it is meant to be nurtured. It flourishes best when cultivated with trust, empathy, and joy.

Leadership, Responsibility, and Misplaced Hierarchy

Educational leadership is not about control. It is about creating safe spaces for growth, both for learners and for teachers. But too often, school leadership teams focus on compliance, instead of curiosity. Structures of accountability, while necessary, too frequently devolve into rigid systems that stifle rather than support.

More painful still is when senior teachers, who should be the torchbearers of mentorship, lapse into perpetuating pseudo-hierarchies. Instead of nurturing younger colleagues, they can sometimes fall into patterns of critique, control, or exclusion. In doing so, they inadvertently turn classrooms into battlegrounds of authority rather than sanctuaries of learning.

Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, whose birthday we mark as Teacher’s Day in India, once said:

“The end-product of education should be a free creative man, who can battle against historical circumstances and adversities of nature.”

If this is the vision, then how tragic it is when teachers themselves are shackled by the very hierarchies that should liberate them.

What Frameworks Demand

To be fair, frameworks and policies have tried to address this. The National Education Policy 2020 and the National Curriculum Framework 2023 explicitly state the importance of “enabling and empowering teachers.” But this must move beyond slogans. Professional development cannot be reduced to one-time workshops and PowerPoints.

International frameworks, too, echo this. The IB Learner Profile emphasises that both students and teachers must embody attributes such as “inquirers” and “reflective.” Similarly, Cambridge’s ethos highlights “education for a better world,” which requires teachers who themselves feel inspired and empowered.

Yet policy without culture remains sterile. If schools treat teachers as replaceable rather than invaluable, if capacity building is a checkbox rather than a commitment, then empowerment remains rhetoric.

Why Teaching Matters

Teaching is the quiet force that shapes futures long before they are visible. At its heart, it is not the transmission of information but the cultivation of clarity, confidence, and curiosity in another human being. A teacher does not merely instruct; they ignite imagination, awaken conscience, and nurture resilience.

What distinguishes teaching from many other professions is its ripple effect. A single encouraging word in the classroom can travel across years, influencing careers, shaping character, and even redirecting the course of communities. This is why education systems must never reduce teaching to a checklist of duties or metrics of efficiency. Teaching is nation-building in its most intimate form, transforming individual lives that, together, determine the trajectory of a society.

Today, when pressures of hierarchy, bureaucracy, and commercialization threaten to stifle that essence, we must remind ourselves that teaching is a covenant of trust. It is where influence flows not from command but from compassion, not from hierarchy but from humility. To protect that covenant is to protect the possibility of a brighter, freer, more humane future.

The Way Forward to Joyous Pedagogy

What then is required? Three essentials stand out:

1. Safe Spaces for Teachers: Just as students thrive in classrooms that encourage questioning, teachers thrive in schools that allow vulnerability, reflection, and experimentation without fear of reprimand.

2. Mentorship over Hierarchy: Senior teachers and leadership teams must embrace mentoring as their primary role. Authority without empathy undermines pedagogy. Guidance with care, however, multiplies influence.

3. Reclaiming Joy: Professional learning communities, collaborative innovation, and acknowledgment of teachers as learners themselves are crucial. As the IB rightly suggests, “education is a journey of inquiry.” Teachers, too, deserve to rediscover inquiry and joy.

Mirror to Society

The state of teaching is never just a matter of classrooms; it is a mirror of society itself. If schools become places where hierarchy overwhelms accountability, society too risks inheriting rigidity and division. But if schools nurture joy, empowerment, and the freedom to learn, then the society of tomorrow will inherit resilience, creativity, and compassion.

This is why protecting the delight of learning is not only an educational concern, but a national one. For every teacher who is empowered, inspired, and valued, a classroom lights up—and with it, the minds and lives of countless students.

I count it a privilege that my own journey as a teacher began early: first, in middle school, guiding a younger peer, and later, at just 16, serving as a class teacher and maths teacher for three months. Those moments, however small, revealed the profound gift of teaching—to shape, to encourage, and to witness cognitive construction in young minds.

To this day, I carry that same gratitude. For teaching is not merely a task; it is a trust. And when honoured, it builds not just classrooms, but the very fabric of our society.

Teacher’s Day and the Call Ahead

Teacher’s Day should not become a ritual of garlands and speeches while ignoring the struggles within faculty rooms. Instead, it should be a moment of resolve.

To borrow the words of the teacher from Bhopal: “I am forgetting the joy I once felt in teaching.” Let us ensure this is never the refrain of an entire generation of teachers.

As someone who has led at sea and now learns with students in classrooms, I know storms can be weathered only when the crew rows together. So too in education: when teachers, senior colleagues, leadership teams, and policymakers row in unison, pedagogy thrives.

On this Teacher’s Day, may we reclaim the joy of teaching, dismantle suffocating hierarchies, and ensure that classrooms remain what they were always meant to be: places of freedom, discovery, and light.

“When teachers thrive, society sails forward.”