There’s a well-known story in many South Asian households about Badsha Babur and his ailing son, Humayun. In this tale, Babur prays to take on his son’s illness, circling his bed and pleading for the burden to be shifted to him.
Whether you take it literally or see it as a metaphor, the underlying message is clear: True leadership is about caring, not just showing off. It’s about having the authority to absorb pain instead of pushing it away.
The best teachers I know embody this kind of leadership on a daily basis. They carry the class’s anxieties, miscommunications, and uneven levels of preparedness so that real learning can happen. Teachers have an incredible ability to take in confusion and turn it into clarity.
Here's the thing: Unlike emperors, they don’t rule over empires. They operate within systems. And when those systems keep piling on the pressure, it becomes nearly impossible for them to absorb it all. We often commend teachers for their selflessness, yet we create structures that demand just that. That’s not admirable; it’s downright irresponsible.
Now, if you were to ask a room full of people what a teacher does, you’d likely hear the same old answer: “They teach.” But anyone who has spent time in a classroom -- whether as a student or a teacher -- knows that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Teaching has become a round-the-clock job these days, especially in higher secondary schools and higher education. It encompasses everything from crafting lesson plans and grading assignments to monitoring student progress, providing feedback, advising, writing reference letters, offering pastoral care, mediating disputes, troubleshooting tech issues, writing recommendations, attending countless committee meetings, and yes, actually teaching. It’s not unusual for a teacher to be the go-to person in their department’s first responder, last quality checker, and permanent lightning rod.
We’ve turned teachers into everything except humans.
Let’s unfold the invisible load
What looks like a neat 90-minute class is scaffolded by 6-10 hours of work that don’t fit the timetable: Designing assessments that truly measure learning, crafting rubrics that are fair, moderating those tricky borderline grades, detecting plagiarism without turning the classroom into a police state, and writing feedback that is both honest and compassionate.
Feedback can be especially demanding: The more personalized and timely it is, the more hours it siphons from weekends and nights. Add the expectation to answer messages “instantly,” often from multiple platforms, and you have a job that creeps into every waking hour.
This is not an argument against effort. It’s an argument against pretending limitless effort is cost-free or normal. The result of this pretence is predictable: dedicated teachers either burn out or turn robotic in their approach. When the choice is between caring less and collapsing, detachment can feel like a necessary form of self-defence.
The class dynamic nobody talks about
Let’s talk gently but honestly about the classroom dynamic with Gen-Z students. These young learners are not just intelligent; they’re also deeply motivated by their values and aren’t shy about voicing their thoughts on mental health and social justice.
They expect their education to be relevant and transparent -- honestly, who could argue with that? They’re navigating an attention-driven world that suggests everything should be quick, efficient, and hackable.
If left unexamined, this mindset can lead to late-night messages, disputes over grades before even checking the rubric, and a customer-service posture where the teacher is a content vendor and students always hold the upper hand.
That posture isn’t solely the students’ fault. The education system as a whole markets learning like a Netflix subscription: Pay up, access the content, and rate your experience. When students are treated like customers, they start acting like customers.
But here’s the thing -- learning isn’t just a subscription service. It’s a relationship, and relationships need boundaries, time, and the understanding that struggle is a part of mastering any skill.
So, here’s the deal we should offer our students, especially those in Gen-Z: We’ll be responsive, transparent, and compassionate; in return, you’ll respect our response times, read the rubric before contesting a grade, and engage with the feedback before asking for another round. We’ll show you our human side; you’ll allow us to be human too.
The institutional blind spot
Institutions often claim to prioritize teaching, yet their systems frequently reward visibility more than actual value. The countless hours spent on meaningful tasks -- like crafting fair assessments, refreshing course materials, meeting anxious parents, and mentoring first-generation university students -- seem to go unnoticed unless they make it onto a report.
Meanwhile, the most measurable outputs (attendance logs, spreadsheet compliance, and weekly progress dashboards) expand because they are easy to audit. You get what you measure; we are measuring paperwork.
Compounding the problem, many institutions have normalized email-of-the-urgent, weekend notices, and last-minute policy shifts that cascade down to the classroom. Teachers become shock absorbers for organizational chaos. When results falter, the first fix demanded is “do more”, not “do differently.”
What could be the fix?
So, here are reforms any serious institution could implement this semester without a five-year plan. They can establish clear communication windows with set response times and avoid expecting replies after hours. It’s also important to schedule dedicated, paid time for meaningful feedback and maintain reasonable student-teacher ratios to ensure quality education. Streamlining communication to just two platforms with clear policies can help, too.
Evaluations should be reformed to balance student reviews with peer feedback and teaching portfolios. Protecting prep time from unnecessary meetings is crucial, as is offering compassionate extensions based on documentation and catch-up plans. Lastly, impactful teaching practices should be recognized in promotion criteria, not just research or administrative tasks.
What teachers can do differently, too
Humanizing teachers is not a one-way demand. We have responsibilities we can meet without permission from above. Kick things off by clearly outlining your expectations in the syllabus -- set the stage with communication guidelines, turnaround times, and regrade procedures, and make sure to revisit these in the first few weeks. Design with respect by incorporating rubrics that foresee common mistakes, feedback templates that are both specific and efficient, and examples that illustrate what great work looks like. Foster a culture of constructive feedback with a regrade request form that guides students back to the criteria, transforming complaints into thoughtful analysis.
Be relatable by owning up to your mistakes; this shows students that getting it right is more important than saving face. Lastly, take the time to explain the reasoning behind your rules; when students grasp why these boundaries are in place, they’re much more likely to honour them.
The heart of the matter
Let’s be honest, if we truly value the transfer of knowledge, we have to take weight off the people doing the carrying. Otherwise, we keep circling the same bed -- a sick system, a teacher praying to take on more.
The moral we should draw from Babur is not that the noble path is to suffer in silence; it’s that love without structure is a wish. If we genuinely want to improve our schools, we need to shift away from creating systems that rely on heroics and instead build ones that recognize our shared humanity. The focus shouldn’t be on how much teachers can withstand, but rather on how effectively we can support them in doing what they do best: Guiding students in their learning journey.
Make the teacher human again. Not by lowering standards, but by raising our standards for how we treat the people who raise everyone else.
Umma Salma is a program coordinator -- SIP and Junior instructor of English at Asian University for Women, Chittagong.