Being a teacher
In the most evident sense, it’s about learning how chalk and chalk-dust resistant your phone, laptop, hair, clothes, bags and all your other things are. It’s about having way too much stationary and paper and still wanting and needing to buy more. It’s about final divorcing your love for bags and shoes for the latter.
In the most evident sense, it’s about learning how chalk and chalk-dust resistant your phone, laptop, hair, clothes, bags and all your other things are. It’s about having way too much stationary and paper and still wanting and needing to buy more. It’s about final divorcing your love for bags and shoes for the latter.
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In a more tacit way it’s about feeling confused, happy, incompetent,
lost, humored, sad,inspired angry,outraged,bored and a million other emotions in a a second while having to put on the most serene exterior. It’s about having to remind yourself to breath every second on a bad day.
It’s about letting 62 little people into your life, being on
your feet for those entire 400 minutes and going home after to plan every
second of your next day for survival. It’s about learning to be extremely cautious
about what you wear and what you do as you finally understand that kids learn more by observing
you than by what you teach them.
It’s about finally leaning to respect and appreciate your
ALL your teachers – the good and the not so great ones.
It’s about unleashing the best and worse in you. A bad day
can leave you at lows you’ve never experienced. It teachs you what it means to
fight hard and bitter and find that one reason against all to make it to school the next
day. While a good one can leave you with a high that could almost be considered a felony.
It’s about understanding that someday you will come home feeling guilty and incompetent,
but there will also be days where you’ll come back holding more roses and hand-made
cards than the most popular girl in college. It’s about getting through a day
from the well tucked and washed ironed shirts, platted combed hair, clean
arranged desks to ink-stained torn shirts, ruffled hair, displaced benches,
water fights and an empty first aid box.
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| On teachers day :) |
It’s about being acutely aware that the letters b,d,p,q are
just the same script in different directions. It’s about discovering a million
ways to be creative using paper and finding caricatures of everything at the
back of all question papers even if not an answer is written in the front. It’s about
never getting tired of the words “nice” and “beautiful”. And getting used to “lions”
and “tigers” mentioned randomly in essays (only because the kids know the
spelling of those words and they must write something!)
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| All the hand made envelopes |
It’s about experiencing the ultimate unmatched joy by
finding that sparkle in the kid’s eyes when he finally solves a math problem that he’s been struggling
with for days. It’s about finally understanding that if a kid doesn’t pay attention to you
it’s probably because you haven’t really been catering to his learning style. It’s about
knowing that when a kid is a distracted in class it’s not because he doesn’t
love or respect you but it’s because he probably doesn’t understand a word of
what you’re saying.
It’s about getting that teacher’s climax when you find
that one perfect essay (on 'my school') only to realise that chunks have been plagiarized
from the school calendar. It’s about never giving up, even if it means having
to justify to yourself how technically plagiarism is also a skill.
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| The plagiarized essay |
It about realizing that change does not come in a day but you've gotto keep looking at the signs; keep celebrating
every correct use of a full-stop and every new word used (even if it takes you
forever to decipher the invented spelling and handwriting)
It’s about leaning to build relationships and being trust-worthy.
It’s about finally understanding the importance of making and following up on a
promise. It’s learning to be empathetic, assertive and still caring. It’s about
realizing how tremendously hard it is to raise a child.
It’s about using way too many hand gestures while talking and trying
really hard to not tell your friends and family to raise their hand before they speak to you. It’s about writing a blog and knowing fully well that no words or
pictures would ever do justice to describe this profession.
It’s about having your ultimate pick up line as “You should
come to my class and meet my kids!”
I used to be a 3rd standard teacher, in a low income private school called Guru Nanak in the Sion/Dharavi area of Mumbai, as a Teach for India fellow.
Fantastic and so true to the feeling and anecdotes of being a teacher. I saw the flowers and immediately thought back to Teacher's Day in Beijing each September, and how appreciative students and their parents were. I can absolutely appreciate what you say about keeping promises--like when you say, "If you're really good this semester, then we can have a pizza party"... you better have the pizza ready at the end of the term! Many teachers underestimate how important it is to be consistent and trustworthy, saying to themselves, "They're only kids." I see an expert's ability to appreciate the fully-developed humanity of children--how they're in some ways very simple but also very, very complicated. So many of your stories had me thinking back to my own times in the classroom. Very, very well said! Reading this made my day.
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