I WAS A
TEACHER- A MEMOIR
(PART
II: MY TEACHING CAREER)
As I said
before, I came into my professional teaching career as an arrangement of
destiny, not that I was interested in it nor loved it. I came into it bringing with myself the past
academic background of a best student in high school, the enthusiasm of a
youngster, the fragility and vulnerability of an artist's soul and also the
ultimate hopelessness of a youth who claimed himself to be born into a wrong
family, a wrong country and worst, a wrong century. The hopelessness generated
from the fact that I didn't think that I was born into this world to be just a
high school teacher. With a sublime intellectual brilliance that surprised any
teachers in school, with always-be-the-best academic performance, I thought I
would be able to do something else more worthy. All my childhood dreams started
to collapse when the country changed its owner and since that moment,
everything seemed to start to go against me.
Feeling
the Ultimate Miss
Leaving OMon,
I left behind me a time of my life that I loved most. I left behind me faces of angels that I would
remember for the rest of my life. I left
behind me those fleeting -but-most-precious moments that I would never find
back later on. I came back to Omon a few
times after that to pay my students a visit.
It was raining so hard on those returns that caused Omon streets to be
extremely muddy. Swampy mud following me
on my every footstep reminded me of the memories which just melted into thin
air. Omon sky on those days was darkish and melancholy.
My
Teaching Days
I worked
as a professional teacher in a high school located a few kilometers away from
sea. There was a connection between the
school and the sea here. The sea created our tradition of yearly picnic. It took away one-by-one a few students
quarterly. For so many times I had stood
in front of that sea dreaming of a never-come-back trip just to helplessly
realize that it would never ever happen to an empty-pocketed guy like me. On those days, I believed that there was a
beautiful mermaid far under the sea and there was one time, in tipsy
intoxication, I did try to find her.
Looking
back my then teaching days, I find myself so lucky to never encounter any
problems with my students no matter what type of students they are: good, bad or trouble-making. The good ones worshiped and trusted me with
the academic knowledge I gave out to them.
The bad or trouble-making ones waited until after class-hours to have
chance to have coffee with me, confiding to me their own issues. I had received much more respect and love
from my students than I thought I should, which caused other fellow teachers to
feel so jealous of me. There was one
time they tried to kick me out (and I was out for one week) just to finally
find out that they could not operate the school without me: all my class students refused to study
without me. The day my students escorted me
back to the teaching platform and together fervently sang the song
" Dust of Chalk" to welcome me back may be one of the most memorable
and touching moments of my teaching life.
Materially, I may have not been properly rewarded for my teaching job,
but spiritually I think I was.
Love
Letter
In the
afternoon of a rainy day, a male student came to me and gave me a letter of his
sister who was also a student of mine. In a bit surprise, I opened it and the
first line shocked me:
"Dear
darling, for the first time please allow me to call you- my teacher-
darling...".
I read
through the letter and felt like I was day-dreaming: she said that she had been in love with me
and right now she was deadly sick and wanted to see me. Despite it was raining hard, I hurriedly came
to see her, finding her on her sick-bed with a desperate-looking eyes...
It was the
first time I face-to-face encountered love confession from my female students
but it was not the only. Eight years
after the first incident when I just returned from refugee camp, when I had no
longer been a teacher for a long time, it came the second. A previous female
student came to see me after several efforts trying to find where I was. In the quiet atmosphere of a coffee shop, she
confessed her ten-year love for me to me, which profoundly astounded me with
its drama.
I don't
remember exactly how I reacted to those love confessions from my students. But deep down in my heart, I appreciated all
loves my students reserved for me, no matter who they were, whether they were
males or females. My love to my students
had no gender.
(to be
continued)
Jeffrey Thai
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