No matter a student’s grade or academic level, they’ve likely heard of the famed Mr. CM. He’s a man of many talents, as he’s both a multi-level physics teacher and the moderator of such clubs as ACE Mentoring, Electronics Club, Tim’s Flying Club, Ping Pong Club, and Cricket Club. As he enters the second half of his nineteenth year at Trinity, I sat down with him to talk about his life’s journey.
Mr. Joseph Chittessery-Mathai (known as CM to students and faculty) was born in 1961 in southeast India in a region called Andhra Pradesh, where his father was stationed with the Indian Air Force. He soon moved to and grew up in Tamil Nadu, a region directly below Andhra Pradesh. CM is very strong in his Catholic faith, a trait he got from his family in Kerala, a southwest region of India. He remains connected to his home country, owning a house in Kerala and a complex of houses with his family in Tamil Nadu. He generally visits multiple times a year for holidays and family events.
CM attended school in Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu, finished his master’s degree, and moved to the northeastern city of Jamshedpur. He was considering going into a “thinking of more of a technical kind of a job… [and] was not even thinking about teaching,” even though his grandfather was a professor and his father took up a teaching job after his time in the Air Force. That all changed when his aunt, who also lived in Jamshedpur, called him about a teaching position that had opened up at a school called the Little Flower School. The school, though managed by a group of Catholic nuns, is funded by the Tata group, an Indian auto manufacturer. He was picked up at the train station by the nuns, and though he didn’t even speak the language of the region at the time, was put in front of a class for a practice lesson (the school was all conducted in English).
He claims the lesson went well, but the sisters had some interesting suggestions: “They were actually standing there and saying, okay, when you’re teaching, be serious. Don’t smile… and don’t… show your hands.” Despite that initial struggle, he learned to manage the class of 50 students (both boys and girls) and teach them everything they needed to know about physics. He says that teaching at the Little Flower School has been one of his favorite teaching positions since “the teaching was more challenging, because the students were pretty bright students… [they were] wanting knowledge.” If he gave them an easy test, they would ask, “What is this? There’s no challenge in this.”
While living in Jamshedpur, he married his wife and welcomed his two eldest sons, Joel and Elvis, into the world. Funnily enough, neither of them, nor their younger brother Elton, are named after pop stars as most would assume. Joel was named by the first two letters of his and his wife’s names, and Elvis and Elton just happened to be names he liked. He wanted to be able to provide a good education for his sons and have enough money to support the family, and so he began to look outside of India for teaching positions. His wife was the first to find a job, obtaining a nursing job in Oman. CM went there with her on a travel visa, then entered the UAE over land and began to apply for teaching jobs in Abu Dhabi in 1994. After a year of teaching at a school that he was “not too happy with,” a tutoring client put in his name for a job at the Al-Nahda International School. After two practice lessons, the administrators were confident that he could manage the class and gave him the job. Luckily, the school was able to get him a visa so strong that he could bring his children from India and his wife from Oman to live in Abu Dhabi with him.
While teaching at Al-Nahda, CM built something of a tutoring empire. Both his own students and students from other schools who needed supplemental help in physics came to him for extra lessons. As a Catholic in the UAE, he had some interesting stories. First, he said he went to mass at St. Joseph Center— “it’s not called St. Joseph Church.” While Catholics were allowed to practice in the predominantly Muslim country, the ‘center wasn’t allowed to display symbology such as crosses on the outside of the building. CM had discussions and debates with his tutoring clients about religion, a potentially dangerous act. They brought him the Quran to read, but he was confused by their practices: “They said, no, no, you can’t take the book. Now you have to wash your hands, wash your hair and wash your feet… that’s called ablution.” He managed to convince them to give him the book, but the first thing he saw wasn’t promising. “Straight away, it went to a chapter, and I started reading. And what I was reading was… O ye who believe, do not take Christians and Jews as your friends.” When he expressed understandable concern about that verse, a student offered to bring up the question to his Islamic studies teacher. CM immediately shut that down, saying, “If they feel like I’m preaching the Bible, I will be deported. Which basically means they’ll just come, handcuff me, take me to the airport and [make me] get out.” Nowadays, restrictions have lifted, and Abu Dhabi is a much more progressive place. Non-Muslims can more freely practice religion, and it’s easier to buy things such as alcohol.
Since his kids were growing close to college-age, CM and his wife once again decided to move. In 2005, his wife was offered a job with Norton Healthcare in Louisville and they began preparations to move. At first there was no issue with the school’s principal, but as the date of departure neared, CM began to experience pushback. When he approached the principal again about leaving—a man who, according to CM, “was a tough guy… he used to beat kids. All the teachers… [were] scared of him also”—the principal simply said that if CM tried to leave, he would shred his passport (the passports of the teachers were kept at the school). Luckily, CM had recently returned from a trip to India and had kept his passport at home. After overcoming that, along with a scary traffic stop merely one week before his family’s departure date, CM moved to Louisville in 2005.
Since he moved in December, he had trouble finding teaching positions right away, so he worked as a sub for JCPS in the spring of 2006. His favorite school to sub at was Manual. In the summer of 2006, he began to apply for full-time positions and received offers on the same day from both Trinity and Atherton High School. He finally made the decision to work at Trinity because of his prior experience in Catholic schools “and it’s a nice family atmosphere here.” The rest is history, as he has been one of Trinity’s most popular teachers (and most active in extracurriculars) for the past 19 years.
Due to the fact that CM has had what many would consider a crazy life, he is always willing to tell stories about his time in India, Abu Dhabi, or even in the US. He’s a man that has experienced many cultures (he can speak five languages: Hindi, Urdu, Tamil, Malayalam, and English, and can understand Arabic), yet he remains strong in his Catholic faith and Indian heritage. He clearly loves being a father and husband, as in his class he commonly brings up funny anecdotes about what’s happening in his children’s lives. Above all these traits, CM is a very kind man and simply one of the most interesting people you could ever meet. Trinity is lucky to have him in our community.
