Have you ever asked your child’s teacher why does she teach?  You might hear different reasons when you ask different teachers.  Some will say that they teach for money to support family.  Some will say they love children and they want to be with children.  Some might not know why they teach.

“Why do we teach?” is important to each individual teacher to remind herself of her responsibility and obligation towards the children and also the parents.  Teaching is not just about making sure that the child achieves excellent result academically, but guiding a child to a positive emotional development as well as spiritually confident child.

I always want my children to know that they can rely on their teacher in school once they are separated from their parents.  It’s the feeling of security that helps them progress tremendously in all areas of development.  I let my children know that they can talk to me whenever they need to.  It’s the listening ears that we spare them to ensure that we listen to what they say and they can trust us.  Trust makes a person feel secure too!  Listening ears help children to let go their emotions that might bother them.  I believe no matter how young a child is, he/she deserves the right to talk and to be listened.  Their inner needs must be fulfilled instead of material needs. This helps to boost the child’s confident and self-esteem.

We teach because of our passion towards children.  This passion guide us through all sorts of challenges we face throughout the teaching journey.  Passion drives me in my journey.  With passion, we give our best to deliver our love and care for our children.  As for me, it carries me through to achieve my mission - to allow the children to enjoy their school life, to develop positive learning habits and to cultivate positive behavior and attitude - caring, responsible, independent, respectful and confident.

Teaching is not just about delivering knowledge or information.  Teaching is also about reaching out to each young souls.  This requires lots of patience and love.  Each day of teaching life is challenging as each child grows with changing behavior and attitude.  Patience helps us observe the little changes.  Observation helps us modify and change our teaching strategies from time to time accordingly.  Therefore, we have to be sensitive and alert towards our environment at all time.

We go extra miles to satisfy a child’s inner needs.  I just finished a class with a boy this afternoon.  I spent extra hours with him to make a space craft.  I asked him to invite his younger brother to join us.  Both of them are just so excited and thrilled.  We enjoyed the process of making the craft.  We talked about the space and he learns the names of each planets even much faster.  We may not make the most perfect and beautiful space craft, but the effort and laughter that we put in together make it the most valuable craft.  When we are just doing a very simple act, but we manage to cultivate many beautiful values into a child in the process - responsibility, respect, helping each other, sharing of materials and so on.  At the same time, we help the child to know that learning is not a boring activity, but it is fun and interesting.  I love  to spend quality time with young children, as they also remind me to be patient and more loving.  The most satisfying aspect in the craft making this afternoon is that I see two happy little faces at the end of the day.

Dealing with parents is another challenge in teaching career.  I never find it difficult to be with young children.  However I do find it challenging in dealing with adults.  Most adults have their own perception and mind set.  We can be successful in our career, but do not mean that we are able to deliver what a child really needs.  Most of the time, a child might just need our shoulders to lean on, or a pair of listening ears, or just our time to play with them and so on.  There are parents who are opened to any information about their child, but there are parents who can’t accept any remarks about their child.

Teaching other people’s child is a huge responsibility.  Nurture them as our own.  Every moment we are practicing good behavior and manners as our children are observing and might imitate our action as well because we are the role model.  Therefore, teaching is also helping ourselves to be a better person.  Who is the teacher at the end of the day?  Each of us!  Children are our teacher too as they keep remind us to behave appropriately too!