My co-teachers always tell me "Hey, remember what they say, "patience is a virtue". Calm down and put yourself together." whenever I get myself caught in a situation of getting really mad at my students. When I say "really mad", I mean it. I could go as as far as shouting at kids and banging the door at them. I know it's wrong and shouldn't be done but I'm working on it.
I haven't always been the "patient one", this reflects how I am in school, at work or even at home. And as I was thinking about how I am doing in my career now, I thought that this negative attitude of mine was really one of the things I have been considering if I'll still be pursuing my teaching career. One of the main reasons why I'm considering this is because I know that being a teacher is a big responsibility. Not only does a teacher should be knowledgeable of what s/he teaches, a teacher should also know HOW to teach his/her students. And in methods of teaching, teaching by example is the most efficient method if you would ask me. How I see it through the philosophy of Realism, teaching in schools involve 3 important components which should work hand in hand: the teacher, subject matter/curriculum and the students. Teachers, having the most power to influence these three factors, should exert the most effort to make teaching by schools successful.
With this, one experience that came to my mind was when I substituted and handled the grade one class of the school where I'm currently employed at. I'm only handling grades 2 to 6 classes, which somehow gives me relief because the grade 1 class is definitely hard to manage, I may say. All the teachers who are handling the said class say the same, no matter what subject or approach they may use with the class, it seems to always fail. Don't get me wrong, not the whole class of 18 students cannot be taught, there are just 5 students (particularly 5 boys) who make it difficult for the teacher to handle the class. If you would want me to describe how these 5 boys behave in class, I would say that they do not really pay attention to the teacher, they stand on tables and chairs as you are having your lecture, they don't participate in the class activities and worst of all, they "wrestle" or "rough play" in class even if the teacher's right infront of them. This was the everyday scenario in my Math class. I don't have the video now to show you what I'm talking about, but I promise to include it in my next blog post! Anyway, to put the long story short, unluckily, our principal gave me the duty and responsibility to substitute for Mathematics 1 classes for about 1 month due to our teacher's maternity leave.
During my 1 month experience of teaching these 5 boys, I could really say that they pushed me to my LIMITS. There came a time wherein I sent them out of the classroom because I was so mad at them. I couldn't teach the whole class because they were so disruptive and painfully noisy and rowdy. Everytime I come home from work, I thought of ways of how I could possibly teach these kids. I even thought "baka hindi na talaga sila kayang turuan. Hopeless na ata eh, hindi nakikinig! Walang gusto kundi maglaro. Hindi gaya ng ibang grade 1 students, nakikinig, nakaupo sa upuan nila at nagpaparticipate sa discussion." But as I have read more about Realism this week, I came to realize that all these grade 1 children are all the same if you look at them. They are all kids, all learners, this was their "MATTER". But if I look into how much interest they have as learners, I'm now talking about their "FORM" or essence. Some members of the grade 1 class are really involved and active in class, you seem them participate and really immerse themselves in the learning experiences I prepare for them. But for the 5 boys I'm talking about, I guess they're much different. Maybe this is influenced by how they were brought up at home or how they are guided by their parents when it comes to forming their learning habits.
This experience during my first year of actual teaching is really not an "inspiring" one, but it definitely CHALLENGED me more. I'm still thinking things over if I would want to continue being in this profession, but having such experience made me want to pursue it. Not only because I want to prove to myself that these kinds of learners are "teachable", but also because I want to make myself realize that I am capable of teaching. I would end this blog entry with one of Thomas Edison's famous sayings:
"Many of life's failures are men who did not realize how close they were to success
when they gave up."
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