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.
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