Hi !

It’s not too late to wish you all HAPPY NEW YEAR. Well,  New Year’s holidays is approaching.  To all the SPM and PMR candidates, holidays shouldn’t be a lame excuse to keep the school bags under your bed or to secrete the notes in your closet. Always remember the ‘genuine battle’ is not too far to go. It determines your destiny. Life is all about planning. Either it turns true or likewise, at least we have put the maximum effort to it. Ask yourself: What do I want to be? Why should I excel in the exam? If you found the answers, decide how you can achieve them. Don’t look back in the future and regret on your doom and fate.

            I have achieved mine. WHY YOU WANT TO BE A TEACHER? My former teachers and friends asked that question some 20 years ago - when I told them I chose to go to Teacher Training College instead of doing any courses at varsity Certainly I don’t teach because teaching is easy (as some people usually say). Personally, I would say teaching is a red-eye, sweaty-palm and sinking-stomach profession. Red - eye, because I never feel ready to teach, no matter how late I stay up preparing for my lesson the night before. Sweaty-palm, because I am always nervous before I walk into the classroom, thinking whether the students are able to follow my lesson actively – just like I planned. Sinking-stomach, because I walk out of the classroom 30-40 minutes later convinced that I was even more boring than usual. Nor do I teach because I think I know all the answers or because I have so many things to share. Though, sometimes I am amazed that my students actually take notes on what I say in class! J

            Why then, do I teach? I teach because I like the pace of the academic calendar. May, November and December offer an opportunity to mix reflection, relax and traveling – a break from school and work loads. I teach because teaching is a profession built on change. Even when the teaching material is the same, I change and most importantly my students change. I teach because I like the freedom to make my own mistakes, to learn my own lessons, to stimulate myself and my students. As a teacher, I am my own boss. If I want my students to learn to write by creating their own textbook, who is to say I may not? I teach because I like to ask questions that students must struggle to answer ( hahahahahah !). While teaching, I sometimes brush up against good questions pondered by them. I teach because teaching gives me many nectars to taste of, many woods to enter and leave, many fine books to read and many ‘ivory-towers’ and real-world experience to discover. Teaching gives me pace, variety, challenge and the opportunity to keep on learning.

            Many times I got offers and promotion to ‘run out of teaching profession’ – They said it would give me more money and power. But I said to myself : I have money. I get paid for doing what I enjoy most – reading books, talking to people, making discoveries and asking questions like “What is the point of being rich?” And I have power. I have power to nudge, to fan sparks, to ask troubling questions, to suggest books, to share experiences, to point out a pathway. What other power matters? So I choose to stay…

            To me, teaching offers something besides money and power : it offers LOVE. Not only the love of learning, books and ideas, but also the love that a teacher feels for that rare student who walks into a teacher’s life and begin to breathe. Perhaps LOVE is the wrong word; MAGIC and MIRACLE  might be better. I teach because, being around people who are beginning to breathe, I occasionally catching my breath with them. 

            So… WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE?

WIE SUKHIHOTU DIN DAENG

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