On the other end

During form four and form five, I had teachers that seemed to me incapable of teaching us. They do not know how to answer questions that we pose to them. This frustrated me greatly and I used to be biased against these teachers. I sort of disliked them and would find every mistake that they make, to complain about. They were teachers for goodness sake, they should know the answers! Same thing happened in form six with our chemistry teacher, who had stopped teaching the subject 16 years ago and needed to refresh her mind. Her teaching was hesitant and whenever we asked questions her answer was always go and read up from your text books or copy from your friends. I was really flustered at that time.

Now, in my job as a homework guidance teacher, I find it hard to answer every question that a student doesn't know. I have to hesitate, think for awhile and check up the dictionary before I can give them a clear and correct answer. I can see the students being flustered themselves and even asked me how come I do not know the answer since I am a 'teacher'. This has caused me to examine myself deeply. I was not 100% sure of the correct answer. I sort of knew it, yet wanting to give them the really right answers, I had to ask other people and use the dictionary before I was really confident with the answer.

Perhaps that was what my teachers went through every time we threw questions at them. They were not 100% sure so they did not dare to give us the answer immediately. Perhaps they went home themselves and searched, looked out for the answers. They did not want to give the wrong answers to us. Perhaps they did their work by checking refrence books and other materials to come prepared for our next lessons. Perhaps, being a teacher is not as easy it seems after all.

Comments

chian said…
now that u've mention about it...i realize that one of my lecuters, too, is unable to answer some of our tutorial questions. There are certain questions that even I can get the answer, but she couldn't. Her tutorial class is exceptionally boring because she spend a lot of time thinking about how to come about the answer. This shows that she has not been doing her 'homework' i.e. our homework as well. Well, maybe she has too many subjects to teach, or maybe she's too tired, or maybe because this is at university level, not primary and secondary anymore, things r more complicated now. But Kath, I'm sure u know the answers, u just need to be more confident. belive in yourself. U'r a dedicated teacher btw :)
Kath said…
haha.. thank you thank you. Kesian, even until this level we still face these problems of 'weird' teachers...hehe. You guys must be smart to stump your teacher till she can't answer your questions.. :) Gonna be my turn to face 'funny' teachers too..

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