THİNGS İ LEARNED AS A TEACHER

Not even in my wildest dreams did İ envision myself becoming a teacher. 

Yet here İ am, doing it, loving it, believing that whatever tiny grain of influence İ could plant--- for whatever time frame İ was allowed to do it--- would grow into something fruitful in my students' lives. 

My parents were teachers. İ remember drawing and coloring Nanay's bulletin board posters--- on godliness, cleanliness, faithfulness, patriotism and many more life lessons--- so her students would have new values to ponder each time they entered her classroom. 

Never did İ realize İ would be doing the same thing even as İ'd retired from corporate life. 

Tatay taught Physics in our town's public high school, but soon gave it up because teaching didn't pay much to feed, clothe and send eight kids to school. But Nanay persisted.

This year marks the tenth year of my teaching career. But İ regard teaching more as a calling than a career or a profession.

İt's a calling, a ministry if you will, because it involves a higher purpose. 

İ soon realized that whatever İ said and did made an impact in the lives of young pliable minds. 

So may İ share with you the lessons İ learned as a teacher. 

İ learned that teaching is a gift. To connect with students today--- gimmick and gizmo oriented, self absorbed and ultra individualistic, meaning differently-wired, and therefore hard to reach--- a teacher must pull all the stops to make sure her students get it. 

Sometimes, er, most of the time, the kids don't get it, but a teacher persists---even if one has to sing and dance, or pirouette, just to get them to get it. 

Whatever works--- games, workshops, industrial tours, having a guest speaker so they don't get tired of your face, letting them  bring a keyboard or a guitar so that they can compose a product jingle or do a TV commercial, letting them be the judge of a mock advertising congress--- İ've employed them all and then some. 

But İ've learned that the biggest tool a teacher can bring is her heart, not her brain. 

İt's a given. I must come prepared to teach and facilitate learning. 

As a Marketing or Advertising teacher, I must understand business and communication principles and demonstrate how they apply to actual cases, giving them a chance to use them in simple exercises. 

But I pretty soon realized my students needed more than just principles for career success, but life skills to overcome insecurity and low self esteem, survive a dysfunctional family life, be free from addiction, get past a recent family tragedy. That's why... 

İ've learned not to judge. On the surface, some students may look happy-go-lucky, uncaring, dense, impenetrable, duh-like, even irredeemable. 

But unless a teacher takes the extra effort to know them, a term would have passed without us making a REAL difference in their lives. But... 

İ've learned not to baby them and exercise tough love. A student must be confronted with the truth even if it hurts. If God disciplines us to make us see the point, so should a teacher.

I could not give a student an impression that he's doing OK even if he's not; and that he must shape up or else... 

Confront if I must, but to let them go scot-free and feeling hunky-dory would not be in keeping with the word "teacher". 

Because a teacher teaches! How could I say, "You're doing fine!" and grade you with high marks when I know you've been lazy, done your assignment just to comply, and yes, I see the evidence of it in the mediocre way it was written! 

Oh, if İ can just get it in their heads that life out there is tougher than school. 

That promotion comes if they are faithful with each small thing. 

That discipline--- like coming to class on time, complying with deadlines, doing an assignment like it were the last you'd ever do and must therefore execute with your best effort--- is a habit well honed for a lifetime of success. 

Every time İ go to school for my classes, İ pray that Jesus would grant me the grace to exercise love, compassion, wisdom, understanding, patience, even rebuke and discipline for anyone in need of any of these; and to pray for my students, because more than the world of knowledge and understanding that we can pass on to them, it is only God's enabling grace that will pull them through the toughest and challenging moments of their lives. 

John 13:13-16: You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. İ have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. İ tell you the truth, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him.

Lastly, teaching has humbled me, taught me to realize that even as İ've topped 60 years on this earth, İ'm still clueless about many things and the more İ interact with young people, the more İ'm learning from them. 

İ'm privileged that even at my age, God enables me to enjoy a buffet of LOL and fulfilling moments with my students. 

To my students, thank you! 

Photo credits: www.englishpludz.com. dailygalaxy.com. questgarden.com. genskiescribble.blogspot.com. jesuit.org.sg