More Than Just To Teach.

My career choices are starting to loom into my mind, and they’re starkly adorned with well-built judgements based on experience and study. I’ve been working as a teacher assistant for almost a year now, and I’ve grown to become particularly partial to becoming, somehow, a teacher.

I’m working full days this year, and I get to see the life of a teacher closely; their routines, attitudes and behaviours. I see myself in the idealist version of what it takes to be a teacher; the complete empathy, shimmering optimism, support and unconditional mentorship. The career itself requires so many traits I already believe I have, though I need time to let them develop more steadily and righteously.

some of the things I like to see at school. :)

The empathy required is quite astounding, with every single task throughout the day. Every student is like a customised book of life, and you’ve got to handle it with great care, extreme personalisation yet a fair equity. I admire the way teachers have this tremendous effect on students’ lives, and I want to play a role in that. I see how a word I say can actually draw a smile upon their faces, lift them up, help them improve, prosper their minds and souls. Teachers are such a valuable memory, which may impact our lives forever.

All I’m missing here is the leadership. As I stand in the classes, I’m still an assistant, still looking up at the head teacher and wondering if I could ever stand right there, in her position and manage the class. It’s such a frightful place; to be in charge and in control because there are some techniques quite adopted by many teachers that aren’t what I exactly believe in. There are concepts I have studied in my sociology courses with deeply resonate within me; education’s role in socialisation and social control. I don’t want to be there to coerce and force stereotypical societal values into the students’ heads. Rather contrarily, I wish to allow them to use their own and discern what values they’d like to follow.

The key is, by effective role modelling and becoming a living proof of what I believe is righteous, could make a difference in the society. Hard work, hope and being a free-spirit are things which I’d like to demonstrate influentially, to make those students see the differences around them and make a decision on how to build up their characters.

Teaching is such a dear career but, it requires loads of emotional work and I’m not sure I can handle it, although I have the tendency to. I’m sensitive and a fundamental people-pleaser, which I’m afraid won’t help me. Perhaps, I’m still maturing and building that shield around my heart, to strengthen my beliefs and develop this tact when dealing with others. These are things I assume I shall learn, and I’m making myself aware of how it is like to be in the adult world, it’s both hideous and full of opportunities at the same time.

This week, I had two of the students in the class I’m working with hugging me. It really did affect me wholly because I felt.. loved? I felt as if the judgements I hold upon my self, limiting the expansion of my self-confidence were frail and invalid. I’m not as awful as I had perceived. I’m able to actually make people happy, by sprouting a tendency to give a hug, just as simple as that.

I’m not that bad.

I think I’m in a quite critical period in my life, and I’m trying my best to take advantage of it. I’m not a little kid anymore, aware that in a few years, I’ll have to make drastic decisions. As I’m exposing myself to the notion of expanding my comfort-zone, things that could have left me restless and anxious don’t seem to shake as much anymore. As soon as I feel the fear, I know it’s therapeutic, my brain has already defined it as a cue to accept the challenge and go for it. That’s it, isn’t it? I’m just glad I’m not spending my time, wasting it.

Teaching, as beautiful as it is, is not potential-satisfying. I know that if I ever make it to become a teacher, I’ll have to leave. I’ll have to expand my comfort-zone by leaving the safe walls of education and schools and become a social entrepreneur. I know it by intuition, but I have no access to the chapter of destiny which beholds the details.

I’m not planning my future, no. That would be ridiculously insane. But I’m discovering myself in my environment, positioning my values, giving myself a place in this world, in this country.

I’m grateful for the unknown possibilities which I shall make sure to fully grasp and make beauty out of. (: