I found this really interesting, because I’m about to step into teaching, and even after practicum, you get a glimpse that teaching life isn’t all that it’s purported to be. I mean, even when we were just in schools for the school experience, you already got the feeling that all the advertisements on the buses rang hollow. Practicum made me realise the amount of extra work a teacher could end up doing. So I’m just wondering — amidst all this, despite the fact that teaching takes a backseat, do you still enjoy it? Is it still the reason you went into it? 7 years is not a short time.
A comment I received many moons ago. I wonder how this person is doing in school now.
A student from my very first year of teaching came back to school yesterday and told me that I had made a huge difference in her life all those years ago. She asked me if I remembered how I paid attention to her in class and how I chose her to represent the class in a public speaking competition. It seemed that just by doing that, I made her feel like she was worth something. At that point in time, she was feeling bad about herself because she had just moved from N(T) stream to N(A) stream and by choosing her to enter the competition, I made her feel special.
Sometimes, you do so much for some students and they couldn’t care less. Then other times, your decisions and your actions affect them so deeply.
A lot of the time, I get the impulse to quit teaching. If it is not the insane hours during the school term, it’s the administrative work or the difficult students or simply the frustration that nothing you do works. And you start to think that maybe a job that isn’t teaching would be so much better. It doesn’t help when you see people around you getting burnt out and leaving the profession.
And then, once a year, teachers’ day comes around. For me at least, it reminds me why I’m still here – as a teacher and as a teacher in my school. It’s nice to think that you have played a part, no matter how small, in someone’s life – providing them with the means to move on in life and the opportunity to succeed. Of course, not all my students go on to bigger and better things, but many do go on to have decent lives and when they come back to say hi, I’m happy to have seen them grow. And sometimes this overshadows all the pain and exhaustion the job brings.
That said, I wouldn’t mind being paid more.
