Sunday, September 05, 2010
2:50 AM
So... here, read
this.
I enjoy being right about things as much as the next person but this was one of those cases where I was hoping I was wrong. And maybe I am still wrong. Certainly, though, I have not seen evidence of this (based on all of 2 weeks of gainful employment).
You see, a few days ago, I was lying in bed trying to sleep when this horrifying thought occurred to me:
"From the moment I woke up this morning until now, as I am trying to sleep, I have not ONCE stopped thinking about stuff related to teaching."This terrified me because I realized that as a full-time teacher, this has simply become a truth about my life... and I don't like it. I have never been (nor will I ever be) one of those teachers who wants or enjoys having the teaching profession as the center of their life. I have met teachers who are like this. I know a teacher at my school now who is like this. There are some people who are simply born to be teachers - they are able to derive
happiness from being a teacher. I am not one of them. I can derive
satisfaction from being a teacher (if you read the referring post, you know how I distinguish between the two), and I also know that I am born with (or have developed) the skills to be a good teacher...
But there is a difference between being born to be a teacher and being born with the skills necessary to be successful at the profession. See, no one would (or "should" is perhaps the operative term) be able to tell that Jon Wong and Teaching aren't exactly a natural fit. Why? Because of this particular combination:
1. I possess (or think I possess) all the skills necessary to be a good teacher.
2. I have an instinctive inclination against being half-assessed about anything.
In basic terms, you could plunk me down in front of practically ANY job and I'd probably do said job to the best of my abilities. I don't really make half-assed attempts. As an indolent sloth, I usually get around this by not doing things at all. I believe in the phase "if something's worth doing, it's worth doing well," I just don't consider very many things worth doing. But I digress...
So if you take that part of the equation, patch it together with the fact that admittedly, many of my strengths are applicable to the teaching profession (empathy, interest in youth culture, ability to speak clearly and in an interesting fashion, etc...), well then naturally, one might conclude that Jon Wong and Teaching are a match made in heaven!
Except there's a difference between being great at something and liking it. It's just not the most common situation you could encounter because most people aren't good at things they don't like to do. Most of us aren't even good at things we DO like to do. And don't get me wrong, I don't DISLIKE teaching. I just don't like it enough to be ok with the fact that I spend all of my free time thinking about it. I like teaching to the extent that going to work does not fill me with dread. But I do have other interests that I am having a hard time pursuing because teaching eats up my life even when I'm not in school.
By the way, none of this caught me by surprise. It's a well known fact that teaching (especially in your first two years) eats up your life. I'm simply pointing out that so far, my fears from the post I made in December have been justified. When you have to think about paying rent and putting food on the table, you can't just decide to stop working because it's not the perfect job for you. You trucker on because that's how real life works.
I'm going to leave this post for now. I'll have a better idea of whether or not I believe myself a few months down the line. After all, I haven't really given this profession a chance to grow on me. Come to think of it, though, maybe we should make this exposure to harsh reality part of our education programs. Then nobody but the truly dedicated would really want to be teachers, you say? Well, it would solve our surplus teacher problems, at least.
