One Year A Teacher.

 

I can't believe I'm writing this. Goodness, what a year! I've seen miracles before, but not this way, not in that magnitude, in that quality and quantity. I adore this post idea, and I'm quite galvanized to keep writing it every single year. I imagine myself writing "Twenty Years A Teacher". I wonder how it would be like then. Oh, my heart shakes at the possibilities awaiting this beautiful unfolding.

I'm writing this after I had celebrated the end of year ceremony and witnessed a learner crying when she received the grade of her dreams. Those children, they break my heart each time I see them. I started this year being quite awful at hugging people, getting all awkward whenever I had to be intimate. It's the last day today and I can't recognise myself as I rushed and hugged them all so lovingly. I didn't recognise myself when I smiled in pictures even though I'm quite insecure about being in photographs. I can't recognise myself at all, tears in my eyes, giving thanks with so much vehemence and reverence for all the memories and all the milestones.

I think this year taught me to love and be loved. It taught me that I'm enough, no matter what I do. I always wondered how I'd ever end up planning lessons and delivering content well enough, but it was rather miraculous how God has bestowed so much grace upon the journey. Even on the days I was completely out of ideas, God's benevolence would flow into my heart with connections to make. It was truly not me. I want to say it over and over again: it was not I. It was the creative potential of this beautiful universe orchestrated in a little life as mine. 

The first miracle was finding my own shelf in the class just one day before we started school. The very shelf I used to own when I was in ninth grade or so. I cannot forget it, and i am documenting it so that I never forget the miracles of this world, when it guides and supports us to keep believing, to keep surrendering through leaps of faith. Afterwards, every week was a miracle. All the projects, my learners' creativity, their enthusiasm and engagement-- they always propelled us forwards. Even online school wasn't that awful, despite the many listless moments which personally drained me. But we are all so grateful, even for the difficult, unexciting times.

There are a few approaches I truly enjoyed using this year: I loved how my learners chose their own groups while working, how we started the class using positive affirmations, how we enjoyed our reading routines, learned and reinforced so many concepts over the year, and of course interviewed the whole school for our Global Problem Solvers class. I found it thrilling when my learners implemented whatever they learned in projects by the end of each unit, it was a time of unlimited creativity, with incredible acts and output. We had so much fun and many memories, all of them linked through our family-like relationship and other connections we made with the world. This year was my very first baby step towards a holistic learning experience.

I'm extremely grateful. I always thought my first year as a teacher would be terrible and awfully daunting. And so, I am grateful, so heartily grateful to have become a vessel for so much transformation and growth.

I'm now excited to meet my next batch of learners, and I pray, from the deepest cell of my heart, that I receive the learners I need the most, and who need me for miracles to take shape and manifest.

17.06.2021