In hindsight, I realized I've grown to be very comfortable at teaching now. Even while teaching at the Y and for the first few months here, there were still frequent panic moments right before I stepped into the classroom. "What am I gonna do?", "How would they react?", "When should I say what?", and things like that kept flashing through my mind. I am always this extremely shy person that I recall when my cousins found out I'm a teacher now that they were as shocked as I myself was at the time. I guess only through experience had I got the hang of how to teach in spite of not feeling prepared, lack of organized materials, and even a bad vibe in class. It's actually a lot of mental and psychological work. If I have things mapped and planned out in mind and always think about the desired outcome, I'm already off to a good start.
Talking about thoughts and mind, I watched this very interesting movie based on a self-help book "The Secret". It reminds me of the book "Drawing the Powers of Heaven". I kind of agree what the movie says that our mind is limitless and it can bring about many goods. We need to nourish it with good thoughts and stop feeding it with "junks" and all the negativity. I'm amazed not too long ago I was just thinking that people who whine and complain tend to "attract" more bad things that happen to them. And I find people who are uplifting and positive attractive. That's probably what a "bright person" really means. Anyways, I think this is only the first step, thoughts need to be converted to actions in order to become "things", not like what the movie implies things will happen without actions.
I just heard from a few of my former students, one from Columbia, a couple from Mexico, and one from Peru. It is so good to see the progress they have made in their lives. There is nothing more satisfying than seeing my students change and grow in a positive way whether I have anything to do with that.
Going back to last week, our students just took their much dreaded big tests and they anxiously waited for their results. Quite sadly, still half of the class failed and much to our surprise, most of them failed two and a couple of them even all three tests that it's alarmingly unusual. I was nervous and almost afraid to go back to the classroom as I didn't quite know how they would react to the news. So the first thing I did was to offer a few words of comfort and encouragement as best I could. I was so glad they took it well and school went on as usual. There were still laughter and jokes in class. Quite a few of them seemed to work even harder than before. Not until the end of the week did we realize we made a mistake in scoring and most of them actually passed the tests they usually did well on. Everyone was ecstatic as we found out right before the weekend, and so we had a good one.
Last but not least, have a happy mid-autmn/moon festival!
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