Teaching is a calling, or so they say.
I’m not so sure if I regard my profession as a vocation. After all, there is more to life than my job, even if it involves something as groundbreaking and earth-shaking as impacting lives.
But one thing’s for sure. To be able to sustain in teaching, you must be a people person. This is because the myriad stresses of the job often sap my energy. I can only go the extra mile because I still care for my students as unique individuals.
Not to mention my overwhelming sense of responsibility. I want to do my job extraordinarily well. Maybe you can call it as ego.
The incident that triggered the above reflections was my student, Liam failing his composition exam despite having strong language skills. He hails from the Philippines and arrived in Singapore a couple of years ago. He mentioned to me before that back in his homeland, he got rewarded via writing in a medieval style.
I sure as hell don’t know what a medieval style entails. Maybe that’s why he has not been passing his compos.
Anyway, I got him to write a second draft for the essay he had written during the year-end exam.
Nope, not too pleased with the effort.
I sat down with him and gave him pointers on how to improve his second draft.
His third draft was okay, but it was devoid of the details that made his exam attempt pretty fun to read. So, I became a curator. I labelled the most promising bits from each draft and strung them together.
Then, I used my free periods to get him to type out his fourth draft on my laptop under my supervision. Because you know, kids will slack if you let them.
45 minutes later, he was done typing.
Finally, a solid composition that he can use as his Northern Star.
I felt exhausted, yet exhilarated. Because I stuck to my guns and did all that it took to get him to write awesomely.
To make my efforts more worth it, I used his composition to craft a vocabulary Cloze exercise. Will use it for my first period tomorrow so that my other students would benefit from the hard work. (And so that he gets to flex 💪 his language skills.)
That’s why I have managed to stay so long in this profession. Because my love for people has never ceased, unlike rocks being eroded into sand by the ravages of time.