Alhamdulillah, at 23, I’ve gotten the chance to be in a kindergarten. Teaching kids the essentials skills and knowledge they need in life.
I once dream about being a kindergarten teacher because to me, I really want to be an important figure to shape the future generation. My childhood experience wasn’t perfect, but it is okay, I learned to move on. However, i won’t just let it go without making any effort to make other’s childhood better than mine.
When i got the job, I was so excited, and I am still now. Almost a month working with the children made me feel important. My job wasn’t easy. I admit, I almost quit for some reasons, but as for now, I am still there.
You know what, I love working with the kids but unfortunately, I discovered that I am not the best at being a kindergarten teacher ( at least not as the perfect teacher they want me to be). One of my training session was to observe how the senior teacher handle the children and manage her class. Believe me, she made it seems so easy to teach little kids.
I was very motivated when I came back from the training and very inspired to handle my class properly. However, I do realize that with my character and my personality, I won’t be able to be like the senior teacher. She has a very loud voice, makes it easy to grab the attention of the littles. I don’t have that. And when I want to shout, I have this horrible feeling of afraid, and scared that I might make my students shy away from me.
Yes, the students in my class need a firm teacher to discipline them. But I have no idea why it is so hard for be to be one. I don’t have the heart to look at their face and stay mad at them. Yes, I am there to make sure they are able to listen to teachers and behave in class, but I just can’t look at their innocent faces and raise my voice at them.
Especially when I handled the ‘parents and teachers meet’. I heard the stories from parents, about how they raise their kids and how their kids behave at home. I have this one parent came to me and directly ask me:
“So teacher, what advice do you want to give me?”
Oh wow, I have been a teacher for not even a month and seriously, I am not even married. Well, at first I thought he was trying to provoke, but seriously he was sincerely asking for suggestions. He mentioned that he feels guilty to his child for not spending enough time with him for giving more attention to his younger siblings, and for working days and nights and not having the chance to look after him, his child.
He told me that he was once raising his voice at his child at home because he can't stand his boy’s attitude. Yet, the boy innocently said,” Dad, please do not raise your voice at me, just now, at school, the teacher already mad at me for peeing in my pants. Why must you scold me too, now, at home?”
Honestly, I was touched, and can’t help but feel guilty that I unintentionally mad at him for peeing in the class. I didn’t really scold him, but maybe because I was surprised with the incident, so I asked him, “why didn’t you wear the diapers?”, but I believe, since he was already feeling very bad about himself plus I asked him that way, made him very feel very guilty, he took my expression very seriously.
Back to the parent’s question, I believe he knows how problematic his child is at school and how other students dislike his son’s behavior. Furthermore, almost every teacher think that they need to be more firm in order to discipline him. But now I understand that what the boy really need is attention and affection. The father told me, please not to be very firm with his child because at home, really the boy don’t have all the love he needs as a five-years-old boy.
-----
And I have another student, a problematic student who hard to sit and listen in class. Always running around and make noise while I am teaching. When I give him a book and work to do, he never finish. In addition, he will scribble the book or even tear the page. During the parent’s teachers meet, you have no idea how nervous I was to meet his parent and how do I tell his mom that her son is still unable to read and write. It turns out that his mom knows it and came to me and tell me,” The truth is, I never have time for my child”. Well, I was shocked that she didn’t even blame me for her son’s disability, yet blame herself for that.
--------
I learned that parents have different expectations for each of their children. At that moment, I blame the school system for trying to push the teachers to make sure each students are at the same pace and they must finish the book according to its target timeline.
To be honest, I highly respect parents who appreciate and respect their kid’s pace in the learning process. I respect parents who sincerely admit their flaws and don’t put the blame entirely on teachers or their kids.
- I’m not sure where am I going with this writing, I’m so sorry, but I need a sleep now… InsyaAllah will have a continuing post on this. Regardless, hope there is(are) something to ponder upon from this.
No comments:
Post a Comment