First Days of Teaching
Lord, this is, never mistakenly, the very first time I take up my pen ---sitting
in front of a computer to write seriously ever since I came to Hangzhou, say, more than four months ago. See! FOUR months! Is that possible for Lucy given her
former crazy enthusiasm for writing?
Thank He Xiaolong, one of my students who gave such detailed presentation of views in class and made thus a heated and zoo-like classroom of mine. There ideas were emerging and I was truly blessed to see the sparkling of eyes of students. By the way, if there is anything we should ever celebrate as being a teacher despite the scanty income (barely enough to make a living actually as it seems to me
), that shall never be anything else beside the sparkling eyes of students, because that sign, to any giving teacher, weighs more than diamonds as it is the pure light for knowledge in a growing heart in any student. The highest prize a teacher can ever have.
I did not, stop the class from making a zoo out of my classroom. But quite the contrary, encouraged He Xiaolong to go on and let the whispering grow. Sometimes
this is the trick of the teacher, you do not kill the booming ideas, and instead
, should make room for them.
Exactly what I did.
He Xiaolong was then asked to type out all his points of views and those who disagree are invited to send to me through qq or email their reasons. As a teacher,
a studying companion and a guide, I know my task is even tougher, to analyse and summarize. But let’s do it, this is also heavenly fun.
Coming back from my class, deadly exhausted by giving six classes on end, my heart should started to sing. “It is truly blessing to be a teacher”, I thought to myself, “A life that I will never trade for doing anything else.”
Teaching the postgraduate students has been giving me much more fun than expected and during this course, I gave all my energy each time and they fed me back with theirs. A heart to heart course.
And in my only undergraduate class, today I had the most naughty students coming
to me to share his thoughts on college life. He made great disturbance to my class before but I have never given up upon him, knowing from my judgement that he
is a smart boy, only lacking of some guide into the right direction.
Students will not fall you. They give you a heart when they see that you are giving yours.
Already my second months of being a full-time teacher. The exhaustion, mostly physically has been huge enough as not to be looked over. But the satisfaction and
the self fulfillment, have gone even further, to the undeciphered future.
Sometimes when I look at my postgraduate students in class and when my heart pumps faster because of their dramatic progress as a whole, pride fills me. I am proud of them and I hope they are also proud of me. What will happen if I also got
a inspiring teacher as Lucy am right now? How I envy them! If I were in my own
class, I will never stop as who I am right now.
A good teacher can be the best luck in one’s life, even after he goes out of school and works for decades. But they are not easy to be found. They may probably
be bumped into. And if you are very lucky, you will have one as lucy. Of course Lucy had her luck already too, in her freshman days, when Lily lit up a
fire in her that burns through the seven otherwise-can-be-dull years and that fire, I am more than glad to say, is still flaring, reaching hundreds more each year.
Sometimes I teach, yet mostly I guide. I do give knowledge, but I have been placing cultivating a spirit to learn and the courage to be critical to both textbook and teacher at even higher positions.
My students laugh, in reaction to my carefully-planned jokes before class. And they bean, on getting to know more on their own with the help from me. What’s more, they are giving me the confidence and the contentment to continue to be standing on the teaching stage and live a life with them. Also, they teach me in return, in many ways, giving me new ideas and new ways of seeing things.
Robert once told me that he would still be s teacher even if he is not paid.—I
know he is not well paid either, just like me.
But money is something, far from everything in life.
The joy of life is.
The satisfaction from students is.
And my heart will go on, with you all.
