From student... to teacher!

I had never planned to become a teacher, in fact, I specifically rejected the sole notion of teaching the moment I stepped out of high school and was unsure as to what career path to pursue. There were a number of teachers that had suggested I get into education, including my scholarship counsellor, however, due to my insecurities about my social skills, along with the fact that my concept of being a teacher was that they would give lecture after lecture, day after day was daunting since I was not very fond of public speaking either. Regardless, I had always considered teaching as a noble profession, something I deeply admired, but would not dare partake in.

As the years passed, I started getting more information on what it truly meant to be a teacher. Public speaking was no longer the main reason I would not venture into teaching: the immense responsibility has become the number one reason I would not become a teacher. Not just the planning, grading and reflection aspects, but the impact a teacher has on a learner felt like such a gargantuan responsibility I thought I was never going to be able to fulfil.

I would have to say that it was mainly due to the Teaching Practices practices that I started changing my mind. If I had not been forced by the curriculum to actually go into the education field and gotten hands-on experiences of the practical side of teaching, I would have never considered it a career path at all. Perhaps it was the supervising teacher that helped me last year, or perhaps it was just about finding out by myself that I had it in me, but now, if I were to pursue teaching, I have a philosophy to accompany my teaching, but most importantly, a purpose. And as it so happens to be, it remained unchanged from when I was a wide-eyed high school graduate: to make a difference.

Realism is one of the philosophies that resonated with me, mainly because all content covered should have a real-life application. Exposure to theories and unrealistic scenarios was what kept me back from pursuing education before, and I do not wish other students to delay or prevent their appreciation of knowledge just because they find it useless or non-applicable to reality. That is why I wish to become a teacher who can expose them to the key values of realism: student agency, self-reliance, developing critical thinking skills, and becoming better advocates for their own education. Although I am working as a sixth grade T.A. and I do not possess as many freedoms as a teacher would, I try to implement this in my day-to-day to find ways to relate the content to students’ day-to-day lives. Perhaps using the classical example of “learning how to write properly will help you in your professional lives” might have lost its impact on my students in particular, so I use more ‘fun’ examples, such as “If you misspell a word in Tutti Frutti or Scrabble, you are not getting the points, so pay attention to your spelling, it might just make a difference next time you play one of these games.” Assessments are still traditional in the sense that I cannot make any modifications to the evaluations prepared by the head teachers, so in that sense, I have no way of evaluating if learners are actually internalising all the knowledge they are acquiring, but I must say that my interference with realism principles are rather motivational, as it gets students to pay more attention and become more involved in the activities.

But although I have adopted realism as my teaching philosophy, the one that I would eventually want to incorporate is the Progressivist one. Since I come from an overlooked minority, I want everyone to learn from the past, to attempt to make a better future. But most importantly, I want kids that are going through what I went through to feel like they are seen and represented, to feel like they would have support in the overarching systems that failed me more than once. And perhaps there is not much that I can do as a T.A. as of right now, I am working under conservative teachers whose decisions I have to respect, but I try to help make a more inclusive environment for everyone as much as I can in my current position. Sometimes it is as small as answering questions: once a student approached me and told me he knew of someone who previously presented as a boy but wanted to change that. He asked if he should address them by the new pronouns even though it was frowned upon in his family. I said that I would respect the wishes of the person because it would not be nice to be constantly referred to as something that you are not.

Other times, it is more challenging. After an accident during students’ recess, two students approached me, saying that they could no longer concentrate on the lesson because they were very scared for their friend who had gone home. I told them that I would find out how their friend was doing and let them know as soon as possible, but that they should try to stay in their places and not interrupt the teacher who was trying to talk to the class. After several disruptions, I told them to take their notebook home and finish the work there, and instead, they should grab a piece of paper and write their names there over and over until they felt capable of paying attention to the class again. It might have not been a very significant accommodation, but it made a difference at the moment and helped them regain focus and take their mind off the accident.

As I am starting to become more comfortable in my role as a teacher, I have slowly started implementing the small changes that have made a difference in my students, such as making students feel like their opinions matter, and that they can come to me and confide in me if they are having issues with comprehending the content, social problems with their peers, or even if there is something I can do to improve my way of explaining or giving out classes. Something as seemingly small as letting a student who struggles in a subject take a break to clear their head and come back has made all the difference, which is why, under strict supervision that went unnoticed to the student, I have let them take a break during a summative assessment and it helped them clear their head and performed better.

In conclusion, even if I am still not completely sure if I want to become a teacher, I have come a long way in my way of regarding the profession, to the point of actually enjoying it at the moment. As a T.A., I have resorted to realism as a philosophy to try to provide students with what I lacked during my own education. However, I currently do not hold any power to be able to control the way evaluations are given, and thus, assessments adhere to the head teachers’ philosophies. I would like to teach using progressivism as my ideology though, to right the wrongs in society, even if it is one student at a time.