Teaching

I have always felt that teaching is more of a vocation than a job. It may sound funny but I believe it is an in-born quality, a gift.

Yet so many people who are not in the profession and unfortunately some who are in it stick to the view that teaching is all about forcing into the heads of lazy, dumb individuals things they do not care about, using stick-and-carrot method. Good marks are carrots and a possible failure in the exams can be used as sticks. It's amazing how some people don't accept the very idea that their pupils may actually be intelligent, have their own way of learning and may think in the patterns slightly different from the teachers'.

I love this quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson on teaching: "Be an opener of doors for such as come after thee". For what indeed is a teacher who does not open doors for his pupils? I would like to add not only open the doors but hold them open long enough for them to enter.

For there will always be some who will walk in smoothly and confidently, whereas for others every step takes an effort, still others may stop hesitantly at the porch and get pushed away by a hurrying crowd of their more decisive peers. And a good teacher is the one who manages this crowd, the one who is able to listen through the cacophony of voices, discern each and every one of them and tune in to it.