To One Month and Many to Come

By: Izyan Izzaty

Miss Izzaty

I thought my five years and six months training as a teacher would be enough to equip me as an English teacher. However in my first month here, I slowly learned many lessons on my own. Being a new teacher is anything but a relaxing job. When I stop and sit for a while, I cannot help but to ponder on few things. Why am I interested in teaching? Is it for the money, the job security, the short day of working, holidays? For all I know, these factors are the other way around.

Being a teacher doesn’t pay much, it is enough to have a good life, but not enough to be rich. The short days are nothing but rumors; teachers will need to stay back late everyday just to finish a lot of clerical works. Holidays are cut short to give way for extra classes and school duties. So far, job security is the only reason I can see is true.

It is a dream comes true for any teachers to be able to enter any classroom full of students, who obediently follow the teachers, listen tentatively, do their work quietly and achieve good results in every single exam. Reality, however, kicks hard when none of those will ever happen. Students are always running around, shouting for attention. They purposely forget their homework, leave their books at home, and made my nightmares at night look nothing beside their dramas. I begin to accept that I will never have a perfect classroom.

Do I still love my job?

Surprisingly, YES. I learned a lot in this just first month. Most of all, I learned that teaching is not simply about entertaining the students, but guiding them directly through the maze of learning ahead of them. I am not the only one to judge them. As I stand in front of a class day after day the children witness my behaviour both good and bad. Being the new teacher, there's that desire to be cool in order to be accepted by students, but there's also the fear that they'll walk all over me because I am young. Kids are really perceptive. They test boundaries-partly to test the confidence, but mostly because they want boundaries. I made sure I do so early, because if I don't, I believe I will never be able to. In short: You can always let the reins out, but you can't always pull them in. Therefore, the aim to create the rapport, but not to overdo it? Checked! I can imagine being in SK Jugra for more years to come. =)

Classroom teaching session