From Another View…

From Another View…

"Friday afternoon, time to go back home from school, but there is something is calling me to write from where I am sitting now, my school desk. A different place where I always write, I love writing at night in my room with my silence and feeling the peace of being with my own memories and researches. This is the place where I am staying now, and where I want to spend the rest of my life, sharing with my kids…The School."

I always thought growing up was something exciting as I was going  to live new things and older people than me would let me do what I wanted to do without limits, I was so wrong!!

My first experience teaching YL and teenagers was ten years ago, after a radical change in my life which made me think it was time to add something to my adults teaching, that plus was the other view of how kids and teenagers learn, but mainly it was to EDUCATE…

In 2005 I started teaching teenagers and by my surprise I was chosen the tutor of the senior high school students, it was something really challenging for me, my first year teaching teens and I was in charge of adolescents who were at their sixteen, seventeen and some even at eighteen. I had to think a couple of days to give a response to my headmaster, it was not easy at all for a teacher like me who had been working all time with adults going to be the tutor of seniors teenagers and be in charge of their last year of their whole school education life. 

For me it was something really meaningful as my memories as a teen came to my mind and it was great to share breaks, chats, classes, jokes and experiences with those teens who had seen me more than a teacher, as a friend who was there to lead you, not just in a subject, I was there to support them in a hard age of their lives.. Adolescence.

Learning is a life for me, a process we can’t stop it, as it is part of our everyday for me, for you, for them…

My first year teaching at school marked in an awesome way my strengths as an educator, I was a teacher, a psychologist, a mum, an aunt or the oldest sister for some, a best friend for many of them. Sharing with those teens made me grow as a person more than a teacher.

After that year I still taught teens and adults as I could not leave my adults classes either, but this time something else was added to my classes, it was to see the happiness, the innocence, the needs, the trouble each of my learner whatever age they were, need to face somehow.

This year I have come back to teach YL and I felt really frightened of them as my last time with that age was when I was at twenty, but this time it was special, this time I was beginning a new experience teaching kids and teens with special needs. It has been a pleasure to see how those souls are integrating and my other kids always help them to integrate to society and real life.

Teaching is really more than having an objective achieved in your syllabus, teaching in real life is being remembered after years and years like the one who was there giving a smile, encouraging them not to give up in any circumstances, the one who laughed, cried with them, and last but not least the one who was listening to them and believed in them when others may have thought their saying was not important.

Being back to school to lead lives of kids and teenagers has been the best decision in life this year so far.

“Never forget that whatever we do and say to these marvelous souls is part of an experience your students will always keep in their hearts.”

Patty.

  

Making a difference in someone's life..

Looking back  to my teen times and thinking about how a teacher touched my life in a way to let me think that girl called Patty, has had the call in life to be an educator. Then.. What does being an educator imply for a teenager at that time?

Well, to be truly honest I always thought in a teacher who can feel like me, like my peers, our fears, our thoughts, our doubts in adults.. Being a teenager was and is still a really though time in a society like the one we deal it.

Sometimes, I thought if my teachers took time to be in our shoes while planning activities for the class, thinking about what it was stiiting for eight long hours and sharing with them most of the day, many times more hours than what we used to share with our own parents because of their jobs and life duties.

As soon as my questions came to me again and again I thought why nobody cares about what I do have in mind about my education. maybe my partners were having so much fun in our teenager time and of course I did too, but there was an internal call which let me think and rethink the way to learn by living and feeling ...

My like for learning languages was increasing so fast and suddenly the time for applying to a career came to me, I still remember my dad insisting on applying to the management faculty and also still having in mind the many arguments I had with him at that time because I knew I wanted to be an educator, Everybody knows, educators are not the best paid in society, but the ones who really got the spirit of touching a life through teaching,  know that the sensation and the reward is something we  can not describe with words , something you just feel , something that makes your eyes shine when you talk about your students, their accomplishments, their strengths, their weaknesses, their goals, their happiness, their sadness, their lives...

It was not just teaching a subject or getting people full of contexts as if they were a computer to store information, then why storing information? Was Educating about it?

My personal answer after twenty years is : Not at all! 

Teaching young learners, teenagers, adults imply not only to be an instructor, it is to see we, teachers work with human beings with needs, with feelings, with worries, with hearts...

It might be many teachers who could say teaching different ages has got a huge difference, I can only say teaching marks a huge difference in someone's life, as a educator and a life student as my job is teaching I do believe we have a huge responsibility and deep  honour in this society to be the ones who are called the responsible of a future generation for a postive or negative outcome. 

I have lived the experience during all these twenty years and believe me I agree it is not easy at all to lead a life and being a teacher, as maybe our career is the only one which never stops, of course we have a time to end classes, but we never have a time to end our duties and tasks as educators at home. 

I have met many colleagues who were in a time for questioning themselves if it they were in the right path ot it was time to do something else. 

Our duties as educators are not only thinking about how to present a class, what activities, which tool, technology, aids, method, if you are reading me and thinking I am not meaning the academic site, you are right! One of the things we are well known to mark someone's life and make a difference in a human being is the emotional side, the way to see people we have in a class as humans, not just as learners of a subject.

"Take a deep breath and try again", still remember it has been one of my useful phrases with my kids ( no matter age) 

Nobody is saying this job is easy at all, but I do not think  that people that do something with passion and love  can call that something a nightmare job.

Many times we can end a day really tired and at the same time start a day very tired from the previous one, but after these twenty I am really convinced I can figure out myself doing something else than leading people's lives through educating.

Then this short post is for all of us, teachers just a reminder of the awesome blessing of what being an eduactor is against all odds that may show up in our path.

Enjoy your teaching time! 
Patty.