Why I Am a Teacher
By: 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑪𝑨𝑳𝑳𝑨𝑮𝑯𝑨𝑵
Tags: Theclhn, Teacher Stories, Teachers, Schools, Education

I’m a teacher because I hate school. Most of my bad experiences happened in there and it’s the last place on earth I would think of coming back.

When I finished high school, I didn’t know what I wanted to do, so I decided to work, because the best way to know if you like something is by doing it. I searched for a job like crazy, until my friend told me about an opportunity at the school we studied English — and as I was desperate at that time, I didn’t think that being a teacher was a bad idea.

I started as a teacher assistant and little by little, I started to fall in love with the profession. However, as I was just an assistant — and sometimes the substitute teacher — the staff didn’t treated me as “part of the team”, I was just there. Some treated me as a teacher and others as “just someone who comes to help”, which made me feel confused to the point I doubted that I deserved to be there.

After six months, I quit because I couldn’t work like that anymore. They didn’t want me to sign the contract so they wouldn’t have to pay the right amount of money of the work I was doing.

Only when I quitted, I realised how much I enjoyed being a teacher. After that, I knew what I wanted to do, so I went to college, but it was a nightmare — specially the internships.

For the internships, the students had to find schools who’d accept us as an intern, which it was a tiring task as well, because most of the teachers don’t like to have someone in their classroom watching and writing critics about their work. Because of that, most of the times I asked the teacher to simply sign the papers, so I could leave them alone. I can’t describe the relieve I used to feel when that happened, because every time that I had to sit together with the students and watch the class to analyse the teacher’s method, the only thing I could think was excuses to get out of there earlier.

“How can I be a teacher if I hate to be at school?”, I used to think. A teacher who fears school is one of the biggest ironies that I ever witnessed. The internships lasted two years and a half, so you can imagine how many times that question troubled my head and my heart. I was never confused about a thing as I was about being a teacher. I already worked as a teacher and loved it, but at college, every little thing about teaching was a nightmare.

My last internship helped me to understand later, why I was still doing that, why I was insisting of being a teacher — because my job experiences weren’t good as well.

Last year of college, last internship. I was very sick last year (2019). I had stomach flu because of the stress and my weight dropped to 44kg (97lb), I lost my beloved friend to pneumonia and everything felt like it was falling apart.

I was more than ready — and sure — that I would go to my old high school — which I deeply disliked — talk to my old teacher, ask her to sign the papers, go home relieved and finally focus on the final exams. However, as things were falling apart, so did I. My old lovely teacher wasn’t there anymore and the school seemed even more unpleased. The coordinator at that time was talking to me and explaining why she wouldn’t sign the papers and tears started to flow on my face while I remained in silence. “Do you want a cup of water?”, she naturally asked; I nodded ‘yes’ and when I took a sip, she said, “You will never have future in this area disliking school that much”.

I left that school for the last time. I just started to walk and think about how stupid I was for crying, and when I got to the centre of the city, I stopped in front of a deep stream and thought, “If I will have no future, what’s the point?”. “Get out of there, you don’t want to jump”, a gentle voice kept repeating in my head times enough for me to realise that I really didn’t want to jump in the stream, but I wanted to jump out of those feelings, that situation. I looked at the skies that day, because we always should look up when we feel lost, the answer always comes from there.

I walked away, thinking about how dangerous words are, that words kill, and I should always be careful with the words I say or hear. That day, I found my best friend’s mother and she cheered me up. I decided to go to a high school I always wanted to study and there they accept me as an intern. The English teacher was the sweetest person I’ve ever met. He kept repeating my name in every conversation we had, and that made me feel special. My lovely old teacher was working there! She explained why she left the other school, I made lovely friends, and I still dream of working there someday. The lovely English teacher — that I never memorized his name — asked me to teach his class every Wednesday and there I remembered why I kept doing this, why those words didn’t killed me and why I am a teacher.

I am a teacher because I hate school. Who didn’t growing up? Because of that, now I’m capable of helping kids who faced the same struggles I did.

At college, someone once said that ‘teachers are actors’. I thought it was because we had to entertain the kids to keep their attention to the lessons, but now, I know that’s also because, sometimes, a teacher have to be a mother, a father, a sister, a brother, a friend, a listener… I’ll be what my kids need me to be that day, that year, that time; someone who hug, who listen, who correct them. That’s why I am a teacher, I’m a little bit of everything!