Day 3: What I love about teaching.

What I love the most about teaching.


Fortunately today's prompt is a little more inspiring than yesterday's and easier to answer. The two things I love most about being a teacher are " the unpredictability and the endless possibilities". 
    When I tell people I am a language teacher, the comment I often get is: "That must be nice for you, all those holidays." Then they quickly change the topic of the conversation. I see them think: what could possible be interesting about a bunch of (pre-)adolescents in a room, mangling a foreign language? Being a lawyer, a CEO, a doctor, a journalist, how exciting! But a teacher?
     Still I wouldn't trade my job for another one, ever. In a way teaching is one of the most unpredictable and exciting jobs you can get. Anything can happen in my class, adolescents are in a constant state of change and no day is the same. I can plan a great lesson and it can bomb, and when I feel disappointed I will suddenly get a great lesson out of a pop song, without any effort at all.

      Even when I am having a bad day, I know it won't last long. One of my students will cheer me up with something before the first class is even underway. My students present me every day with the endless possibilities we all have. Grownups tend to forget that in life "anything is possible". Dreams and hopes often get shelved in favour of security and comfort, but adolescents stil see the world as malleable. They believe that they have influence over their future and they make me question everything I do, simply by suggesting alternatives I had never even considered.
     I love sharing my passion for languages with them, because I feel it impacts their way of seeing the world. A different language offers them yet another way of thinking and feeling. Through my teaching I expand their world, just as they expand mine through their questioning. What I love most about teaching is learning to accept the unpredictability of life and being reintroduced to the endless possibilities this life has to offer to all of us every day.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 6: Henry Searle

Who was your most inspirational colleague and why?      I've been teaching for over twenty years and in all that time have met many great educators, but the person who has had the biggest influence on my career would be Henry Searle. He got me when I was still very green and education was just something I had rolled into.     To understand this better, a bit of background is needed. I found myself in Moscow at the beginning of the nineties after having finished an MA in modern languages, one of which was Russian. I arrived in the Russian capital in 1988 when the words Gorbachev and Perestroika were on everyone's lips. It was an exciting time, freedom finally became more than just a vague possibility and for a couple of years I worked for various news agencies in varies capacities, but exciting though it was, it was never really my thing.      Foreigners flooded to the Russian capital in search of new business opportunities.The only International school in Moscow in those
Read more

Day 9: the bucket list

Image
The bucket list It was inevitable. The bucket list is without doubt one of the most popular things to come out of our social media culture. So here we go: Share 5 random facts about yourself: 1) I love my son Felix and think he's the best thing that ever happened to me. 2) I don't like mobile phones. I don't understand what people have to talk or SMS about all day and I much rather talk to the person face to face. They should be for emergencies only, or for people who are abroad and have no other options. 3) In my opinion the power of laughter is underestimated. When I have a bad day, the only thing that saves me is a good laugh and I feel very lucky that I am working in a school. One of the kids will make me laugh, so few days go by without having laughed at least once. 4) My favorite place in the world is our house in France. On the terrace in the summer with my family, my dog and some of my best friends. 5) I am one of the very few people (at least accord
Read more

Day 5: Mentoring.

What does a good mentor do?      Traditionally a mentor is  someone who imparts wisdom to and shares knowledge with a less experienced colleague. Throughout my career in education I have not really been mentored a lot, really just once, but I am keeping that for tomorrow's post, because that mentor had a great impact on my development.      What does a good mentor do? A good mentor has to be available, honest and ready to share his own successful and less successful experiences. As a department head I have mentored (or tried to mentor) some of my younger colleagues and I can confirm that it's not easy to add this to an already busy schedule.      Sharing is the easier one, but I feel I have let people down more than once when it comes to availability and honesty.  Within our department we generally share materials and expertise and everyone knows my door is always open, but I can't guarantee I am available at all times. As for honesty I am usually an honest person, but
Read more