A picture of me terrorizing students 8 years ago, teaching General Paper in Victoria Junior College
Teachers
Today’s topic, which I have ruminated about for a long time, is about teachers. Teachers in school, life and work – all facets of life, really. I’ve always felt that if I had a wedding (and I’m pretty sure I would invite as little people as possible) I would have a special table for all the teachers that have made an impact in my life. I can list out all the important ones, but I feel they deserve their own segment in the future. I guess that’s ironic for someone who skipped as much school as possible ever since I went to junior college. But despite my penchant for truancy, I developed a love of teaching from the best of my teachers. Ever since I was a relief teacher for General Paper in Victoria Junior College after my army days, I have never ceased to teach even till today.
I think we often forget that teachers are more than just conduits of knowledge. The good ones will shape your world view in line with theirs and often we start to take on the values (even behaviors) of the ones we respect the most. I guess there are two key parts to being a teacher: one would be the efficacy of your pedagogy and the other would be the ethos of teacher: who he is as a person.
Good pedagogy is difficult to develop. It takes time and often, a willingness to admit that something could be better. Teachers often forget the lens of the student, as I had discovered while teaching guitar in my Uni days. People come with various levels of commitment, capabilities and backgrounds thus my aspirations to teach my students to become rockstars in a span of 8 weeks fell to ruins. The first iteration of my syllabus made sense but felt too difficult to grasp without consistent practice (I reminded myself that when I first started I played 6 hours a day whereas these students have exams and assignments that I ignored). The second iteration of my syllabus was much simpler and only tried to impart the basics as well as an understanding of the instrument to allow these students to further their knowledge at their own time. It was much more effective – students could hit the milestones, came to lessons without feeling stressed (hopefully) and ultimately could decide how far they would like to take their skill in guitar into their own fingers (could not resist the pun). It was here that I realized the power of using frameworks in teaching effectively: to rewire the mind so they started to think like you, like how a more experienced guitar player would view and deconstruct the instrument.
But the person matters as well. I’ve always felt that the best teachers need not be the best players. If skill was a function of talent and experience, then oftentimes the very best players were too talented to recognize and identify the struggles of a person that may not be as talented. For the skills that came to these talented people so easily, they may be unable to communicate clearly exactly what went wrong. Possibly because they may have never made such mistakes or encountered such difficulties in their learning journey. That is not to say that talented people cannot teach – any talented individual who has put in the time to understand all facets of a skill coupled with a patient disposition can. Thankfully, being the largely mediocre guitar player that I am, I have very familiar with the pain of learning guitar (literally and figuratively). The calluses on my fingers will testify the same.
This article, which was supposed to be a short and sweet tribute to teachers, ballooned into an unintended essay about the skill of teaching. I thought I should stop myself because I’m sure many have stopped even before the second paragraph – such is the wondrous power of social media and our increasingly short attention spans. In any case I promise next time I’ll just write about a short story or experience I had; perhaps one of the short stories I would share in my seminar.
Before I leave though, do take some time to think about your teachers and the ones that impacted you. Reach out to them – I’m pretty sure they remember you. Even my primary school teacher remembers me from 20+ years ago. Still, that could be because I was a terror who bred mealworms in my abacus case…
P.S: I did want to write about how great leaders in organizations tend to be really good teachers because of the reasons above but maybe another time.