On Becoming a (Lazy) Teacher

I have always thought of myself LAZY. Even then I was a kid, I always get hit by my mother for not doing the chores I was expected to do. The scolding would go on for almost everyday, and me, I just don’t learn. I can’t remember anymore the reason why I was like that before. I mean, why don’t I learn? Ah! I always reasoned out that it is the right of every child to play and have a leisure. Although I only said that mentally and never told my mother. You see, I will never ever answer my mother disrespectfully. Getting hit with a broomstick everyday isn’t appealing. But I just let that routine went on for almost everyday.

As I was growing older, I began to realize that my mother was right. I am LAZY. I just always spend my time just sitting and reading a book. I am like a prince at our home. I just get out from my room when it’s already meal time. I don’t even go out with friends anymore. I just love the company of books than my friends sometimes. Maybe because books are more sensible and fun and… just awesome. I would always love to get myself lost into books. I don’t know why my mother never bother me with the chores anymore. Maybe because she knows that I am doing a more important thing for my future as a writer. Or maybe because she got tired of scolding me.

I am a teacher-in-the-making. As a teacher, it is really important to be workaholic, industrious, diligent, hard-working and all of those words/characteristics my mother and classmates wishes me to possess. It’s getting really dangerous because I only became that person they wished me to become when I am doing something of great interest to me (like reading, writing and blogging). I have never really like the idea of teaching. But I don’t practically hate it either. It’s just that, it never lured me. I never saw it as an interesting thing. So why did you choose this course, stupid?

That was what I feared. What would going to happen to me when I’m already teaching? Would I always receive complaints? Would the student even learn from me? Would I even stay long teaching? And hundreds of questions.

Here came our Practice Teaching. For almost five months, we would be in field, teaching, so that we would be trained and get exposed to the real world of teachers. It sure felt like The Judgement Day. Okay. Not that. But you get the picture.

As our Practice Teaching went on, a miracle happened. I was beginning to like it. It started to interest me. I love hearing my students calling me “sir”, and with a lace of respect and admiration on their voices. I came to love being enclosed in the four corner of a classroom, surrounded by my students. I came to love talking in front of them. Each of them are like books. They got a story, I know, as I read their faces. I love laughing with them. I love looking at them. And I find myself hating weekends for that means I couldn’t see them. I found myself looking forward at the thought of seeing their faces. I came to love them.

Above all, I came to love TEACHING. There is always that sense of fulfillment at the end of the day when all of us, Practice Teachers, would gather in the library to talk about our day. There is always that happiness I feel knowing that I have imparted my knowledge to my students; that they have learned through me; that I have made an impression on their lives. Aside from my family, friends and books, the four sections of grade seven became one of the reasons why I wake up smiling everyday, and get on with my life.

As our Practice Teaching is nearing to an end now, I feel a pang of pain inside me. As I have said, I have learned to love my students now. And it always bring an aching loneliness, saying GOODBYE to them. But I guess, in the end, the whole of life is an act of letting go. But what hurts the most is not taking a moment to say goodbye. Okay. Wait! I sound like Pi. But really, it’s hard. Well, I guess I really have to learn how to say goodbye now. Though I always say goodbye to them every end of class, that’s an entirely different thing. That GOODBYE promises of seeing each other again the next day. But when the time comes that I really have to tell them the Last Goodbye, we would never really know if we’ll ever see each other again.

“Sooo melodramatic, teacher.” I could almost hear one of my stubborn students say. But really, it’s hard.

And now now now. Maybe I am destined to be a TEACHER after all. That sounds just right!

photo of the cat taken from http://www.sodahead.com/ .

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