teaching and loving

I shared to friends a week ago that teaching, for me, has been an up and down ride, like a roller-coaster, if you like. There were days I felt really good at the end of the day. Flashed on my mind were my students' smiles, laughters and funny reactions or statements that made me proud and grateful to be a teacher.

In the meantime, there were frustrating days. I remember going to bed one night, and asking God for help, like really asking, because I felt so weak to deal with teaching stuff on my own.

But both the good days and the bad are part of the package of being a teacher, and I would exchange it for no other.

I know the feeling of how to have a "terror teacher." One that would shake you to your foundations just by one look of a teacher's sharp eyes, or by the piercing words that would hurt so much. So, I don't do that.

I also know of how it is to have a boring teacher, one that would let us read pages of a book in the entire class, or would assign us to report so that she could get away with her responsibility to teach. I'm not saying that assigning students to report/research on some topics is bad, but there are teachers who would use that for the entire term. I don't buy that teaching idea.

So, I'd like to think that I am not a terror teacher, nor a boring one. I have no definite term for what I am as a "laoshi," and it's fine with me to let things go like that.

This term is closing, I actually have less than 2 weeks left. I must admit, I'm emotional again. To tell you honestly, my first term as a teacher, when I found out that I will not be teaching the same students for the next term, I was so disappointed that I almost cried in class (I held back the tears, ok?) when I announced it to the students.

In my second term, because I was busy with the English program in Hyatt International Hotel, I wasn't so much down.

But this term...hay!

I thought I'm good at this already. I thought I'm good at saying goodbye. I'm still not. Or maybe I never will be.

I started giving my final exam this morning. It was an individual Oral exam and so I had the time to speak to students' individually and at the same time get to know them better. As time moved on within the day, It made sense to me that my students' life were interesting to learn about. I wish to follow it, like a person kicking back at the sofa and trying to figure out what's gonna happen next in the ongoing television drama. I wish to know what's gonna happen next with this young lives I've learned to love.

I really don't know if I'm a good teacher. I know some students have looked deep inside of me, of my weaknesses and my emotions, or my strenghts and idealism. Of how I am on a sunny day, or of how my temper gets the better of me when I'm running short of patience.

Yet just now, I realized something. The reason why I will never be able to master the art of saying goodbye to students is that I cannot separate teaching and loving. As I teach students, I learn to love them. It's like I've given them a part of me - of my brain, of my heart.

And the reason it's hard to say goodbye is because it's always hard to let go of something, or someone, you love.