This is something I've been wrestling with posting for a while, but here it is. In all honesty, the past two months or so of teaching have been incredibly hard. Not the instructing part, but that of course is difficult at times too, the reality that teaching never is just instructing. It's you walking alongside a student through their struggles and learning how best to help them. I have had to improvise more times than I care to count. These are not put-together college students, and this isn't the last semester of the English program where we all sit around and discuss our wiritng and what moves us forward in our desire to read and write and do both well.
So, that being said, no two students are alike, and so it is with my two high school private (one-on-one) courses. One is a hard case, and the other enjoys learning; I have to teach to both of them. I have to teach to the one who has a solid hold on grammar, reads silently in class without pitching a fit, and participates in discussion as well as to the one who simply doesn’t want to be taught. My dad told me recently that there is a difference in being a teacher and an educator. A teacher instructs and goes home at the end of the day, her job finished, but an educator is concerned with the student as a whole, understanding that the student brings baggage from home with them into the classroom and that you can never have a student who isn’t affected by what the something-else-that-is-not-your-class is that they are dealing with in their life. No student sheds all burdens when coming to class, so an educator must be aware of the suitcases full of fathers telling them, “You are a lazy bag of s***. You’re not worth it,” “You will never make it to University,” and the others that hold the reality of again sitting alone in the lunch room in an hour. (Yes, all of these statements reside in the worried minds of my two students). These are the students we teach, the ones we are tasked with educating. It is hard, and we rejoice over the victories in the classroom, but we too, are affected when it’s apparent that they would rather be anywhere but sitting in front of you talking about a poem, a novel, or the entire study of English language and literature in general. It is a constant struggle, a daily liturgy that looks like an outward discussion of whether Winston rebels in 1984 and what that looks like as it does wondering if their lack of sleep is a product of them fighting with their father last night. One of my students was so desperate, he had nothing else to bargain with, that he deleted the three-week late draft of his essay just to be non-compliant towards his step-father. It was his only bargaining chip that he held over the man who told him he wasn’t worth it. This student has two cochlear implants and is so self-conscious about them that he will always sit in the back of a class room and never ask a question in fear he didn’t hear someone who just asked the same thing. When I met him, he had a ball cap on and a hoodie pulled over it; he would only talk in mumbles and whispers. Five weeks later, he was bare-headed, smiling and talking about 1984, giving ideas for a paper that he was going to write. It all seemed to be going well. Then he was 20 minutes late two weeks in a row and didn’t do any of the homework. I had to forgo another unit to continue working on his paper draft with him. His mother sat in their car one morning, crying, the student in the backseat with his hand over his face, hoodie and hat on, and the mom asked me to come outside. I sat in the passenger seat while she cried, telling me her son didn’t want to come inside. “I don’t know what to do.” She told me. He was doing his work well that week, but he hit an obstacle with quotes or something else that make him shut down and quit. I told her that I was here for both of them and that I wanted to have class. I turned around to tell the student I was not mad and I would love to have class with him that day, we could work on his paper draft if only he’d come inside, but it had to be his decision ultimately, not mine. I could not make the choice for him; he had to come to class willingly. They drove away thirty minutes later, and I erased the board, packed up my things and went back to my apartment. I had worked so hard to coax him in the door every Saturday morning, worrying every time he would tell him mother to drive away, that this was too difficult and not worth it. He was scared that it was true that he wasn’t good enough. I came home many days after the six hours of what looked more like counselling than teaching to cry because I was so frustrated. At the student’s lack of participation, his father’s abusive behavior, and at the situation itself. I have come to realise that my first foray into the world of teaching is in fact an extreme case, one that few teachers ever see. I have questioned my right to even think of myself as a teacher, “I am a hand-holder” I tell myself. But he is fragile, close to breaking. I am an educator, tasked with helping him, the student who doesn’t want to be taught, whose mind is focused on somewhere far beyond the task at hand. I have to encourage him as a human being, and he would make a wonderful graphic designer. His parents want him to go to university for something else. I am mindful of this as I teach. I am passionate about the subject and about the discussions we can have in-class. But I know not everyone I teach is the same, and I have to remember when things are difficult that I am an educator, not just a teacher. I was struck by a quote I read last night about teaching the students we have, not the ones we wish we had. It is not an easy task, but it is purposeful, so we press on.
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