Written before I finally got my own class! But the question still stands…
Image Source, words my own.
I think it’s quite apparent to those of you that read this blog regularly, that I work with children, as an educator, a teacher.
Something a colleague said to me the other week really made me think, and it’s been on my mind ever since.
Is this true?
A good teacher is born, just that.
It’s an inherent quality that is within you, from the beginning. And though there are teaching colleges, and degrees, if you don’t have that quality, you will never be a truly GOOD teacher.
Is it true?
I really don’t know… I have seen some truly awful ‘teachers’ over the years, and experienced them, as a student too. Those that teach by the book. Using methods that they have learned by rote.
Then I have seen those inspiring educators, who seem to just emit that glow of learning, and seem to impart knowledge to their students, without the kids even knowing that they have just learned something new.
Sure, it never hurt anyone to learn a few skills, but it’s how you use them in practice that is the important thing, I guess…
I wanted to be a teacher from the tender age of 7. I remember it well. When I realised what I wanted to do. It’s all down to Jo Duck! She was our Head Girl at school when I was finishing Primary School, and she came down to us for her work experience. Up until then, I had naturally enjoyed school, and the teachers were part and parcel, of a great experience that I had had. Suddenly, it was brought to my attention that being a teacher was a job! It was something I could do too! And well, that was it, my mind was made up.
Sure I went through the ‘I wanna be a pop star/film star/hairdresser’ etc. phase, but I always came back to the teaching option. As I grew up, attending all the family functions that having a huge family generates, I would naturally end up with all the little kids around me, sometimes even setting up a school, and playing being teacher. This continued as I got older, but it would be the parents bringing their children to me, and knowing I would happily keep them entertained.
The thought of spending my whole working life with these little creatures of wonder, these empty vessels, these dry sponges, filled me with excitement! I wanted to be the one to fill them with knowledge, to give them the liquid knowledge for them to soak up.
Then, as was the requirement, I went to university, to study for my degree… 4 years to perfect what I always wanted to do. But by the third year, I was totally disheartened. Really? Is THIS what teaching was? A whole load of red tape, paperwork, assessments, tests? When did we get to be with the children? Learning? Playing? Having fun? I know there was going to be work in there too, but what I remember from school was so different to what I was expected to provide to a class of children. It’s like the National Curriculum had arrived, just in time to suck out the fun from schools. This was not what I had signed up for!
I was so close to quitting, but a conversation with my mum sat in the stairwell of my student digs in my third year, convinced me to at least finish my degree. But the rot had set in. I had lost that oomph.
Fast forward 14 odd years. I had worked in retail, in the banking industry, then in an office for a marketing company, but no schools. I had my husband and family, and situations at the time meant I left my then job, to give my all to my children, and my son in particular, who needed more support, academically.
But I couldn’t be a Stay At Home Mum, for various reasons. I needed to find work. Something that would suit my life as a wife and mother. One of the mums at Lil Man’s school knew my qualifications and mentioned that there was a Bi-Lingual Teaching Assistant job going at the school. Hours-wise, that would be great, term-time, holidays with the kids, and start and finish alongside them too! And maybe, just maybe, I could get to do what I loved, finally!
I applied, I got an interview, and I got the job! Well, it would have been a no brainier, Teacher for Teaching Assistant money (and, believe me, it is a pittance of salary!).
So, nervously, I stepped back into education, and almost as soon as I got in, working with Primary and Junior school children, that spark was truly ignited once again. Why had I never gone back to it?
I wanted my own class, but I could also see the stresses and strains that the class teachers of now, have put upon them, by the school’s management, who, in turn, are pressured by the higher powers, to produce results, Results RESULTS!
It’s still there though, that yearning for being an inspiration to a generation of children through teaching them. Sure, I get to be something to them as the Teaching Assistant, but it’s not the same as them being your babies, your class… I’m lucky that the teacher I work with gives me a lot of leeway, and respects my ideas, sometimes using them too.
Going back to what my colleague said to me, the other week. She was surprised that I wasn’t a teacher in the school from my demeanour and behaviour with the kids. And she told me “I believe a true teacher is born, not taught. It’s in you. And I can see that in you.”
Honestly, it was one of the biggest compliments that I have ever received, both professionally, and personally.
I can totally see that teaching is not a job or a career, but a vocation. You have to want to do it, you need to have the love for it, in order to do it well. And from that, get the results you hope to achieve.
One day…. I hope, it will happen. I’ll be able to do the job I love fully, with the support of my colleagues, and I already know I have the support of my family behind me!
What do you think? Born to teach or taught to teach?
