Long before a talent becomes a skill, someone usually has to notice it first.
For many of us, that person is a teacher.
This Teachers’ Day, we want to celebrate the teachers who look beyond what’s immediately visible, and recognise the curiosity, strengths, and potential that make each student unique.
The Lesson on a Rameswaram Beach
In 1940, a ten-year-old boy in Rameswaram sat in his classroom while his teacher, Sivasubramania Iyer, tried to explain how birds fly, covering the aerodynamics, the wing shapes, the formations. The boy didn’t get it. When he said so plainly, most teachers might have moved on to the next chapter. Iyer didn’t. He took the entire class down to the seashore that evening, and used the birds flying over the water to show, physically, what he couldn’t get across on a blackboard (ThePrint, July 2026).
That boy was A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. He later wrote that the lesson wasn’t just about how a bird flies. It planted the specific curiosity that eventually carried him into aeronautics, then DRDO, then ISRO, and eventually to the office of President of India. He credited Iyer, by name, in his autobiography Wings of Fire, as one of the teachers who shaped the direction of his entire life.
Iyer didn’t administer a test to figure this out. He just paid attention to what stuck and what didn’t, and adjusted until something did.
The Coach Who Watched From Behind a Tree
In Mumbai, a nervous eleven-year-old failed to impress a well-known cricket coach named Ramakant Achrekar in his first tryout at Shivaji Park. The boy’s older brother asked the coach for one more chance, this time to watch the boy play without him knowing he was being observed. Hidden behind a tree, Achrekar watched a completely different player: relaxed, natural, clearly talented (The Quint, 2019).
That boy was Sachin Tendulkar. Achrekar didn’t just admit him to his academy. He also guided the family to transfer him to Shardashram Vidyamandir, a school that took cricket seriously enough to give him daily match practice.
Achrekar noticed the smallest technical details, down to correcting how young Sachin gripped his bat, and built a training routine around them (Global Indian, 2025). Decades later, when Achrekar passed away in 2019, tributes came from the Prime Minister’s office, calling him a “shining beacon of the Guru Parampara,” a teacher in every sense that matters, even though his subject happened to be cricket (Business Today, 2019).
The Teacher Who Saw Past the Trouble
Not every student who gets seen is already behaving like a star pupil. In fourth grade, a restless, disruptive kid in California was being separated from his best friend because the two of them couldn’t stop causing trouble in class. His new teacher, Imogene “Teddy” Hill, had him figured out within a month. Instead of trying to discipline his energy out of him, she gave him advanced work, along with small rewards for finishing it: five dollars and a giant lollipop for one particularly tough workbook (Rolling Stone, excerpted from Walter Isaacson’s biography).
That kid was Steve Jobs. He later called her “one of the saints of my life,” and said plainly that without her, he was sure he would have ended up in serious trouble instead of building one of the most influential companies in the world.
Mrs. Hill didn’t know she was looking at a future entrepreneur. She just recognised that the disruption was a covering for boredom, not a lack of ability, and she adjusted her approach until the real student underneath had room to show up.
What These Teachers Had in Common
Their impact went beyond simply teaching well. They created the space for their students to explore, experiment, and keep going. They paid attention to what came naturally, what sparked curiosity, and what made each student want to improve.
They adapted their guidance to the student, not just the subject.
Every teacher carries this instinct: the desire to see each student clearly and help them find their footing. But with an entire classroom to look after and limited hours in a day, giving that same close, individual attention to every single student isn’t always possible. Recognising potential takes time and observation, and students themselves may not always know where their interests, strengths, or natural abilities lie.
Giving Teachers More Insight
The goal isn’t to tell a teacher what a student can become. It’s to give them more insight into the student they’re helping get there.
This is where the right technology can complement a teacher’s understanding. Structured assessments can bring together insights into a student’s interests, aptitudes, and working style, helping surface patterns that may not always be immediately visible. Technology can also give students a space to explore questions and possibilities beyond the classroom, at their own pace.
And once a direction becomes clearer, whether a teacher spots it first or a tool helps surface it, the real work is still what Achrekar did every single day at Shivaji Park: turning a spotted talent into a honed skill through practice, feedback, and real exposure to the field itself. Technology can support that process. It can’t replace it.
ProTeen: Adding Insight to a Teacher’s Instinct
Teachers may be the first to notice a student’s strengths and interests, but understanding every student deeply can be challenging in a busy classroom. ProTeen adds another layer of structured insight through assessments that explore interests, aptitudes, and different ways of thinking. These insights can help students better understand themselves while giving teachers a stronger starting point for conversations around their strengths, interests, and possible career directions.
Give teachers more insight to help every student find their direction. Explore ProTeen for career guidance.
To Every Teacher Who Noticed Something First
We often remember teachers for what they taught us. But sometimes, their greatest lesson is something they helped us discover about ourselves: a strength we didn’t know we had, an interest we hadn’t explored, or a possibility we hadn’t imagined.
This Teachers’ Day, here’s to every teacher who saw more in us than we could see in ourselves.