Critical Incident.

Critical incident
First draft by darvesh karim
Human life is full of incidents. We face different incidents since our birth and will be facing them till the last breath on this plant. Hence; incidents are the part of life and these incidents in my opinion, are the actual sources of knowledge, learning and to gain experience. Incidents are actively the happenings which we face in our day to day life and our experience and knowledge increases through these incidents. When we face such situations again in our life, we recall our memory and in the light of past experience we try to deal that situation effectively.
Incidents may be of different nature; some can be joyous incidents, some can be co-incidents and some can be critical incidents and all these incidents may worth to consider and to learn the different lessons. The incident which I am going to narrate here is about a critical incident which made me very upset but played a vital role to transform my behavior.
It was a happening at my former school where I was the in-charge. One day in the last period some important guests from Japan were on a visit to school as we use to receive many Japanese guests, because the school was built by the Japanese donation and patronage and they use to have frequent visits like the education inspectors in Govt. schools. I was briefing the visitors about the school and was showing different venues. When we were in Computer Laboratory and the guests were talking to the students who were working on computers. Meanwhile the school’s ending bell rung and all the students from different classes came out to the corridor and a haste bustle started, which use to happen during the ending timings in every school. But in between that usual situation we heard a very disturbing voice of a student, who was screaming so loud with joy of getting off, but was creating a terrible scene of agitation. The atmosphere become much worst as the guests were there and of-course I had been explaining them about the emphasis on discipline, which we were of course focusing, hence this over reacting and joyous voice of student irritated me, which was giving a contradictory representation of what I briefed the guests.
I left the guests behind in computer laboratory and got out to the corridor with anger while searching for that student like an eagle searching for the food. There were lots of students in corridor who had come out from different classes to leave and among all those students I was not identifying the one who had created the disturbing scene as every one was talking and making fun of each other normally as students use to do often in this situation. I was searching sharply and I noticed a boy who was making fun to his fellow; I thought that he might be the one, who disturbed the setting; I abruptly stopped him and without a single word and having confirmation whether he is the one, caught his left ear so hard and twisted it roughly. The poor innocent boy, I assume very hardly beard the pain; and very surprisingly looked at me with many questions in his eyes. After punishment I murmured angrily to make clear him the cause of punishment, “You don’t bother of school environment and guests and just scream so loudly and disturb the school”. When he become conscious that why I had punished him he started weeping and crying with pain while saying, “Sir I was not making the noise, it was Naved, he run down” – Naveed was a student of an another class - He increased the tempo of crying like a small kid after realizing that I have punished him instead of somebody else who made noise. On realizing that I have punished an innocent, who had not actually created disturbance, I felt very much sorry for the anger and misbehaving with an innocent student without having confirmation of his fault. He went away while weeping and I was much depressed thinking that may be he will complain about me to his parents and I will be not in a position to say a single word to justify my position. Anyhow the next day I was expecting to face his parents and was becoming alert and attentive even on a telephone bell, but till the end of school timing nothing happened and nobody came to meet me. It remained the same for some more days.
At last there was my period in the class where the said student was studying. I called the boy in the front and told him to tell the story to all his class fellows. He hesitated and told me that he didn’t even mention it to his parents and how can he narrate it here. I appreciated his respect towards his teacher in my heart and I encouraged him to tell every thing, so he narrated the whole story and at the end I confessed about the rude behavior and formally apologized.
After that, the said students came very close to me and I used to give him special attention and guidance for his academics. I learnt many lessons from this critical incident that being a teacher we should not lose our temper in any situation and should not misbehave with students and corporal punishment should be strongly discouraged. Another lesson which I learnt that without accurate exploration of an issue, we should not decide and reach to a conclusion, because that ending can be the wrong idea which we perceive.