For me, she’s the best teacher anyone could have. She smiles all the time, she smells nice every second of every day, she’s nice but very strict. Her name, well, she will not be named as it’s a secret. She teaches me English in my current year and she’s very good at what she does. She was an ex-student at my school and so she knows what we do, what we are involved in, what we like and also what we don’t like. I’m in a boarding school, so that means I practically live there. That also means she knows what we do during our free time, which is homework, homework and homework. Other than that, most of us have our extra-curricular practice and whatsoever. That means no free evenings for us since we have our practice every evening of every day. Ok, back to the main subject. She smiles the best smile I’ve ever seen yet. She’s the most awesome person I’ve met yet. In fact, if you try asking anyone in my school who’s the best teacher there, it probably would be her. She’s 26 years old. She’s not married but not available. She’s on the verge of getting married, I think. Well, I hope she gets married fast. I would really want to be at her wedding. She’s very pretty. She’s a lovely woman, I might say. I remember my first class with her. I sat in the front row on the right side of the class near the balcony. She didn’t come in through the front door like all other teachers would. Instead, she came through the back door. When she came to the front of the class wearing her purple baju kurung and her purple selendang along with some books that seemed to be the English textbook, she put on her scary angry face. I thought to myself, she had to be some crazy angry strict lunatic who was practically going to teach me and my friends English. I was in the first set of class for English, which means that I was among the best, for English, in my batch. It was horrifying to know that fact. I know I’m good at English, but I never thought I would be among the best ones in my batch. She let her books be at the teacher’s desk in front of the class and turned around to face us. She slowly walked towards the nearest table in front of her which was my friend’s table right beside mine. She put both her hands on the table and leaned in a bit and stared us from one end of the class to the other. When her eyes met mind, I felt my heart skipped a beat. I was so scared of what she might do next. She looked like she was going to kill someone in the next 5 seconds or so. She looked as if she was ready to punish a group of juveniles. She looked extremely terrifying. She stood straight again after a few seconds and smiled, which looked like a really sarcastic smile, like she just killed a ghost. Yeah, that kind of smile. You get me, right? Ok. With her high pitched voice, she greeted us and told us her name and what to call her. Of course she talked in English with us. She speaks very good English. I’m guessing she’s been abroad before. My friends and I were all so quiet because we didn’t know what to say or what to do. And so we just stood there staring at her. Out of the blue, she laughed. I wasn't sure if she was laughing at us or well, what else is there to laugh at? I turned my head to look at my friends. They too were taken aback, I guess. We stared at each other for a few seconds and looked back at her again. By then, she has already stopped giggling and was currently smirking at us. She said “Why are you guys looking at me like that? I know you guys are hungry but please, I beg you, don’t look at me like I’m a double cheese burger! Relax. There’s like 10 minutes to recess. Now, can you all please have mercy on me and put on a smile?” We were flabbergasted, to say the least. She wasn’t the monster lunatic I said she would be when she had that smile upon her face. As the saying goes, don’t judge a book by its cover, which I eventually did. We talked and introduced ourselves. Then, she asked us how our life in ‘hell’ was. We said that it was alright and we had gotten the hang of it. Then, she laughed again. Was it some kind of a joke to her? I mean, we didn’t want to make her laugh or something. We told her kind of, sort of, the truth. “You really want me to believe life here is ‘alright’? I know how life here is. I’m an ex-student here. Don’t dare lie to me. I’ve been in these classes before, alright? I know. So, mind telling me the truth? The actual story?” Wow. I was that shocked and I guess my friends were too. I looked around the class hoping that someone would stand up and answer her. And thank god somebody did. I was really grateful. “We are how we are. And you should know how we are if you really are an ex-student. So, yeah. We can manage our life here. Thanks teacher.” As my friend sat back down, she just smiled and clapped her hands. “That is exactly what I want you all to do. I want you to feel comfortable to just speak your mind. Just promise me two things. One, you must speak in English. Anyone speaking other languages will have to sing in front of the whole class. Two, I ask you all to respect me like the way you respect your other teachers and your seniors. But I also want you to not be afraid to speak your mind and just talk. I want you to talk as much as you want in my class but when I talk; your job is to listen, and to listen only. You can tell me what you want and what you don’t want. Do we have an agreement?” My mouth was literally smiling the whole time she was talking. She was like my dream teacher whom would never exist and now, she’s standing right in front of me. We all agreed. “Ok. So, now I have a question which you need to answer truthfully. Do you or do you not want homework? Because if you don’t want them, I won’t give you any.” We practically cheered. Some screamed gladly, some gave applause; some just smiled and shook their heads. I was one of those who applauded. All of smiled for like the whole day that day. Thank god she understands, I thought to myself. From then onwards, she only gave us homework when we really had to do it. We never argued. We did what we were asked to and we had fun learning English. I think she also had fun teaching us. We spoke our minds and heart. We told her what we wanted to do for our classes and she never fails to make it come true. For example, we asked to watch a movie. She said ok, and we watched a bunch of movies. But of course, a class is a class. She gave us time to do some kind of a summary on the movies we have watched. Some were documents. We did what we were told to do and handed it in on time or not I’ll bet you, she’ll go bonkers in class. And we wouldn’t want that to happen, right? English this year was very fun indeed. I learned to be braver to just talk. It doesn’t matter if what you’re talking is true or not because it means that at least you have something to talk about. I longed the whole day for English class. I see her as my teacher, my friend, and my sister whom I’ll never have. But I know that she’ll be there when I needed someone to talk to or even when I needed someone to just look at me in the eye and tell me that I’m doing alright. Educator of the year? Yes, it’s definitely her for me.