Something more than ‘teaching’

This spring, when I was just getting started at university as a freshman, I was surprised by a message from a number I was sure would never see on my phone again: my old high school. It said,

“We are looking for university mentors for our students. The mentoring program will take place at our high school, and mentors will be assigned their own group of students. If you wish to become one, please reply to this number.”

Thrilled as I was by the prospect of going back to a place filled with so many memories, I was also terrified of facing the inevitable, being in charge of my own students. Never had I ever taken on the role of the teacher, and I felt far from ready. However, after hours of thinking, I managed to convince myself that it was a great chance to meet younger students and get some real teaching experience, and decided to reply to the message.

I was assigned with 4 students, all freshmen, right away. I remember the first painfully embarrassing class I ‘taught,’ when the textbooks I ordered didn’t arrive on time. So, instead of teaching them the basics of English grammar as intended, I ended up spending 80 awkward minutes in front of the class introducing myself and answering any questions they had. Being new to high school, they were nervous themselves and didn’t have much to say. There were moments where silence went uninterrupted, and time passed very slowly. I remember staring out the window on my way home, trying to think of nothing because if I let my mind wander, it would find its way to those 80 minutes I did not want to recall.

That day, I learned the hard way that I was far beneath the ‘me’ I expected myself to be. I wasn’t great at leading the conversation as I had expected. I wasn’t funny and witty like in my imagination. I realized I was unprepared and I was wrong thinking that simply talking with my new students was going to be easy. After facing my faults, I decided to put it all in the past, focusing on doing better in the future instead of lingering on how bad I had been.

I justified the ‘past me’ by believing that my role as an English teacher was fully about teaching English, and if I was good at that, nothing else would matter. So, starting with the next class, I was ready to blow the students away with my teaching skills. I had prepared enough and was confident.

Well, if you’ve ever been in any kind of class, you can already guess that I was wrong. Students rarely have much regard for teachers that only have regard for their teaching. It was only a matter of time before I noticed my students were becoming less and less bright-eyed as I droned on about tenses and passive. Then, I hesitantly paused in my lecture to mention something that was off-topic but surely caught their attention. And soon enough, they started telling their own stories, worries, and even asked me for help, which I very eagerly gave. That moment I felt more like a teacher than I ever had.

It was at this point that I understood the very obvious, that students don’t just look for academic knowledge in their teachers, and that the role of the teacher is something more than ‘teaching.’ Teaching is a broad concept in its own, and a very important one too, but being a teacher is bigger than that, at least in my opinion. Being a teacher means putting relationships, listening and understanding on the top shelf along with giving knowledge. Now I believe having a teacher’s experience can benefit everyone, because it reminds you that paying attention to those little things is important.