APR.01.2013
The minute I leave my last class before the weekend, I
experience pure joy. This is a state of sweet freedom when my heart is filled
with carefree energy. I call this sensation, which lasts for several hours, my
weekly mini vacation. I have to say that
I do like my job and I especially like my students, but lately when I teach on
Sundays, the first work day of the week,
my Sunday blues starts on Saturday afternoon.
I have always felt
that I wasn’t meant to be a teacher, however,
reflecting on my life choices, I become more and more convinced
that teaching has always been my true
vocation.
I have started teaching as a teen ager and have never
stopped. When my girls were young and learnt to play an instrument in the
Suzuki method, I was their home teacher. I practiced the violin and the cello
with them for years. When my older daughter was two and a half I started with another mother a Sunday school
program for children and their parents so that they all enjoy some Jewish
education.
Although I did well teaching in informal settings, where I
usually volunteered, I was a complete failure when I tried to join the formal
school system. When we returned to
Israel I started teaching high school English. I am embarrassed to admit that
after only one week I understood that this was not a job which I could
do. I was never good at disciplining and had to quit.
I have been teaching at a college for almost twenty years; I
was lucky to find a good position and was happy that I could enjoy teaching
without worrying about discipline.
But in the last few years things have changed; different
political priorities have led to budget cuts and those resulted in much larger
classes. Class management, which is the polite word for disciplining has become
a real challenge, especially when teaching a foreign language. I don’t want to
be strict with my students, it is not their fault. Cramped 40 students in a
small room they are the true victims of a changing system. But as for me, imagining myself tomorrow
standing in front of them and try to command their wondering attention, I realize that, today more than ever, I have
a good reason to feel a teacher’s angst
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