another reason is oscar. he was clever but usually absent-minded. one day in class, i found him not listening to me carefully as usual. i walked to his desk. he was reading a story book attentively. once he saw me, he gave me the book. should i criticize him? should i be angry and start to give the students moral lessons? i continued my lesson as if nothing happened. after class, i wrote a sentence on the bookmark and gave the book back to him with a smile on my face. the sentence said, “ youth is a book which is very hasty.”
as i myself like reading very much, the next day, i gave my students a book list and i suggested them to read more books in their spare time.
later, he came into my office, stood in front of me, bowed to me deeply, with tears in his eyes, and then left without saying anything. but i did feel the change in him ever after.
from them,my first students, i realized that the best way of teaching is love and wisdom, rather than showing anger or criticism. we may meet some students that are not so clever and not so lovely. some of them even give us a headache. but love and wisdom do wonders.
these are the real reasons i teach, these people who grow and change in front of me like living sculptures. being a teacher is being present at the creation, when the person in the clay begins to take shape.
a so-called "promotion" out of teaching would give me money and power. but i am already rich because i get paid to do what i enjoy: reading, talking with people, and asking questions like, “what is the point of being rich?”
i also have power; the power to nudge, to point out a pathway, to help mold a human being. it is the power to change a young person’s life for the better. what other power matters？
i teach because teaching offers something beyond money and power: it offers love. this is not only the love of learning and ideas, but also the love that a teacher feels when those students walk into the classroom and begin to change in front of my eyes. perhaps love is the wrong word: magic might be better.
i teach because, being around people who are just beginning to change, i often find myself changing along with them. there is no rule which says a teacher cannot learn from her students. i teach because even though the content stays the same, the students are always surprising me with new lessons.
thank you.