sabbatical

at first they do not see you as a person but merely an object of ire and ridicule. they sluggishly stand to greet you because they are required to do so. eyes rolled when you introduced yourself. more eyes rolled when you told them the subject you are going to teach. more than half of the time you know they are not listening to what you say.

these plus a lot more were never mentioned in text books. your college professor may have mentioned solutions to your classroom problems; you tried them all but failed. your colleagues tell you that you can do everything a good teacher does but you will end up short. you are about to give up and become one of them - teaching for the sake of teaching, but then you remember that you are there not just to become a good teacher but to become one of the best.

and then you start to do better. you try to win the class over one student at a time. you do not impose rules. the whole class makes the rules. you give them choices and responsibilities. you challenge them but you challenge yourself more. damn that voice in your head that tells you that you're only tiring yourself only to fail in the end.

true enough, you succeed. they stand to greet you because they respect you. now they notice how good your penmanship is on the whiteboard because you were not selfish in giving compliments to them. you and your subject are no longer objects of expletives and shooting eyebrows.

surely i am going to miss teaching. i'll be back next year.