Musing :: Mind : They call me Miss.

I am passionate about teaching.

Well, to be fair I am passionate about education, except I'm a bit privy to another side of it as a teacher :) As of right now in the field of special education via TVI.

While I do think that too much pressure is put on students leaving secondary education and society could be more honest about the likely struggle they will face even with a degree in hand I feel like education in itself SHOULD be a freeing experience if done well. As one of my mentors under study puts it:

"Education should be considered a part of life itself rather than a preparation for life in the future" ~ Dewey

What I mean is, it should be a journey of sorts where you're constantly discovering what you love, you should have the right to change your mind about things and try new things and dabble here and there.

I started collage wanting to be a psychologist and now I'm at uni becoming qualified to be an English and Literature teacher because being exposed to certain subjects helped narrow me down to what I had forgotten, the love I had thought I could not live and eat loving; literature.

This is one of the ways i think the education system fails us. Well, i do not know how it is where you are from but here i feel like we are not teaching our children to love openly that which they love and as a result, fostering in them the desire to passionately pursue this love with an innovative mind.

I feel like there is a point, epecially if your passion is one in the creative sector, where people give up on what everyone told them was the best option, the safe option, in favour of the pursuit of happiness. I've seen painters and musicians leave stable jobs in a struggling economy because the money making option was eating away at their soul from the edges, making its way in to the centre.

In a time in history such as this, why aren't we teaching our children openly that passion can give birth to planning and that the passionate pursuit of this plan can lead to success? That everyone does not have to be a doctor or a lawyer but can be a graphic designer, fashion consultant or very successful etsyshop owner?

I never wanted to be a teacher while i was in school. Never ever. I saw the struggle they faced and i did not want it. Then i graduated community collage. (all available to me at the time). Luckily, i was stubborn enough to study the things i wanted to do anyway, with some back up stable subjects in there too.

Then i got a teaching job, a bit of a 'hold on' really.  This is what we refer to as something you are holding onto till you get what you want. I found an emptiness within my position where children could not read, they had been some how looked over and allowed to progress through the system because it simply did not have time or resources (I'm a small island girl) So while teaching my visually impaired student, which was the focus of my job, i made room for them in my class.

They learned to read and it is on the list of happiest things to ever happen to me. One day, it accrued to me that this was it. This was the thing i loved and wanted to do. I wanted to teach reading...I wanted to teach. I was going to teach.

Today I am a teacher. I explored many things in my school life. I joined programs that focused on Principals of Business class, which allowed me to make business plans but I planned magazine launches so I could write. I joined environmental groups that focused on Geography and Social studies  class but I used this as a jump of point to write slogans for new products we created. I kicked English class backside (ask them about me).

Then I went to collage and I learned and learned and learned in fields after field then made them connect to my love for writing and reading. I used Sociology to learn why my characters would act they way they did and Psychology to learn why they would think the way they would and philosophy to learn what they might believe and art to find out what they would see when they looked at things and the list goes on.

Today i am a teacher.

I write. I teach children to read. I teach them it is okay to be different, I was different, I am different and I can succeed and I can be weak and stand up anyway. I teach them that they can be passionate. That when you are passionate about something you can find it in the threads of education, in unlikely corners.

I have taught English and literature and reading to slow learners, visually impaired children and children who are top of their class, Sunday school children and this semester I am (somehow) going to teach art and dance from kindergarten to grade 2.  I did do some drama and majored in a little art though so it'll be okay. thank God for learning.  All of this while i finish my last four semesters of university, now learning the things I want like linguistics, how to be a better teacher and how to properly write book reviews.

I am a teacher and you can bet your bottom dollar I am passionate about it.

Peace. Love. Learn.