The Curious Case of a Crushing Student

I embarked on a comparism research after an incident that happened to Funmi, a member of the family who also babysits Timi and A.Y. She’s the same lady in that post entry titled ‘The Rally Incident’ whom A.Y. was defending from a dude that approached her. Funmi’s a Junior Secondary School teacher at a boys-only high school and one of the few pretty young female teachers in the school. No doubt about it, she and her female colleagues are bound to have admirers from the men folk.  What she didn’t bargain for was the fact that one of them who would take a desperate step would also turn out to be one of her students.

Funmi with A.Y. and Timi

The student in question was from the Senior Secondary section where Funmi had been temporarily posted to stand-in for another teacher who was on maternity leave. This young fellow had been crushing madly after her and couldn’t afford to sit down and pine away in love.  He literarily stalked his teacher on her way home so as to know where she stayed. She had caught sight of him following her but she had thought it was just a coincidence; she was even disappointed that he had not offered the courtesy to help her carry the extra bag she held. Unknown to her, he just wanted to know where she lived.

Later he came up to our flat and asked to see her.

When she showed up, he told her that his Mum would want her to do private lessons for him and that he would like to have Funmi’s number to give to her to call and make arrangements. 

Smart Funmi refused and rather asked for his Mum’s number instead.

After he left, she called the number only to discover that it was a fake.

Days later he stepped into the staffroom to inform her that it was her period to take their class and she seized this opportunity to punish him for what he did – dropping a fake number.

It was in the course of being punished that the boy confessed that his friends had pushed him to it. His friends were called to also face punishment as accomplices. When his friends joined the punishment, they spilled the beans about their friend’s crush for Funmi.

The boys were punished by teachers in the staffroom for the ‘misdemeanor ‘; one of the male teachers as a matter of fact registered his jealousy because he had been eyeing Funmi. He couldn’t believe a schoolboy got to her Funmi before him.

Unknown to Funmi, the boy had dropped a love letter for her at our door the day before and was thinking she might have seen it and would respond amorously to him the following day when he called her for her teaching period.

The Love Letter

Unfortunately, none of us including Funmi had seen the letter until when she got home that day. It was by chance that we saw the envelope tucked somewhere near the door. 

When Funmi saw the content of the letter, she was enraged and decided that she would drag the boy out during the morning assembly and make him read what he had written.

At this point wifey and I decided to step in and advice her not to.

One thing that I’ve come to understand about student crush on teachers is that it’s something that’s definitely bound to happen in any school where students are within their stages of puberty. These are children experiencing changes and flow of hormones within their bodies; there’s tendency to have that feeling towards anybody, even if it’s a teacher.

I advised Funmi to let the boy be since he had already been punished and made to understand where to draw the line in a teacher-student relationship. He had already been humiliated in the staff room. To further read his ‘love letter’ to the whole school at the morning assembly would ‘kill’ him inside and birth some form of bitterness that could build into something catastrophic in the future.

When a student crushes on his/her teacher, it should be seen as one of those puberty moments which should be wisely managed and strategically handled. Beating up the student and embarrassing him or her before other teachers or the whole school would only backfire on the student’s psyche. Such students need more of counseling than punishment.

If you’re a teacher and you find yourself in such a case, please handle it likewise, you could just be saving that child’s self esteem and psychological development.And if you're a parent and you find out such is happening to your kid, have a heart-to-heart talk with your kid, don't embarrass him or her.

Well...that's if you ever find out.