Terror teachers
I am the way I am because of terror teachers. You know, the kind that can turn first grade chaotic and playful children into stiff military personnel with just one look? Think of that teacher and remember him or her and how it made you feel each time he enters the room. Was he a huge instrument into shaping the kind of person you are now? I had two significant terror teacher in my lifetime and they did just that!
Now if you’re thinking that this speech will be a story of how these teachers of mine were harsh but were just looking out for my best interest, well you’re terribly mistaken.
Teacher number 1 was my 3rd grade piano teacher.At that point, my classes were scheduled on Wednesdays after school.
Wednesdays, the Redemptorist church would hold their novena Masses, thus, heavy traffic was expected. Wednesdays when my brothers with whom I ride to school with had earlier classes. Wednesdays when I had to wake up an hour earlier to get to school on time; and Wednesdays when I had P.E. classes which meant I spent an hour under the heat of the sun playing soccer baseball. You can expect how exhausted I was at the end of the day, but I still had piano. I had been given Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake to learn and after three weeks, I couldn’t quite get it right.
One day, as I tried playing the piece while at the same time trying my best to stay awake, I kept hitting the wrong key. With each wrong key, my teacher would hit my hand with her stick. I left piano class that day with a red mark across my hand. Needless to say, I was never sleepy in piano class anymore, but that was my very last recital performance. Today, I somehow regret stopping. I could only imagine the wonders my fingers could do had I persisted, but at that time, enduring my teacher wasn’t worth improving my talent. That teacher made me give up on my passion for piano.
Teacher number 2 was a department head. During our fourth year, our entire class made the terrible mistake of cheating in one of our exams. I tried to be resilient and strong throughout the successive meetings and interrogations awaiting for the verdict. My friends and teachers know me to be strong and objective and they never saw me as emotional. One Saturday, all those involved in the issue were called for interrogation. Each and every one of us dreadfully waited for our turn. The first one was called at 12 noon and the last one at 11:30 p.m. At 7 p.m. I was called in for my turn and to my surprise a video camera was facing me. It was at that moment that I broke down and as I looked up, our department head was grinning from ear to ear at the look of me crying and apologizing. From that moment on, our exam items could not be found in ant of our resources. It was failure after failure and our department head was hell bent in making our lives difficult and seeing us repeat a year.
She got what she wanted, 10 of us failed. We vowed to succeed despite everything. We worked hard, some of us received special awards during graduation and we all passed one of the hardest licensure exams in the country in just one take. Despite the success, there were two who vowed for vengeance. To be faculty members and provide their students with the same kind of dreadful and difficult exams. While the series of events motivated us to strive hard and stand up stronger and better, it also brought out the worst in some.
Friends, each one of us get a chance to teach somebody, a friend, a student, a colleague or perhaps our own children. It is up to us how to inspire them. Whether we become terror teachers scaring them into performing their best, or we show them what understanding and compassion is and let them shine through that. Remember, we can be authoritative without terrorizing.
As an occupational therapist, I get to teach students with special needs with utmost care and compassion. Despite being bitten, scratched, or spit at, I get to teach them. Those terror teachers made me try my best to be an understanding and patient teacher. I am the teacher that I am today because of them, because they showed me how a teacher should never act!