I’ve been teaching for the past 18 years now. In my first few years of teaching, I focused much on trying to teach my students the skills I knew they would need for college. Eventually, as I grew into my role of not just as an educator but as a formator, I knew that I had to be teaching them more than just skills for language and communication. I realized that I had to teach them about life skills too.
At the start, one of the things that I was conscious about teaching was on making the right choices. But because I was a young teacher, I found it affirming when students sought my help in determining college courses, for example. Surely, I told myself, I was being a good teacher then when I attempted to give them advice and counsel them on a suitable career. And then I realized that many times, students made up their own minds anyway. I had not achieved “sage” status.
As I matured in my profession, I realized that my job was not how to tell my students what to do, it was to help them gather data, sift through facts and feelings and encourage them to have courage in making their own decisions. But even that wasn’t enough. Eventually I came to see that my role as an educator was to craft lessons and create opportunities where my students could actually practice making good choices and accepting the effects of the outcome. Only then could I help them prepare for the much bigger world out there. There was a character from a movie who said that God doesn’t just teach us patience, he gives us opportunities to practice patience.
These days, one of the things that I am conscious about teaching my students is to learn to have grit – the ability to pursue a goal over an extended period of time, despite obstacles. An article in Psychology Today published in 2015 mentioned that in some universities in the United States, college counselors became overwhelmed with the neediness of students. They noticed that students were coming to them with issues such as getting poor grades and breaking up with a significant other. Issues that in the past and with the older generation, they never had to deal with.
On one hand, I am torn between making sure that my students succeed in every possible way. And on the other, I’ve found that having them lose or fail is also very necessary for their growth. It’s difficult sometimes to balance the handholding and the letting go. It’s especially difficult for students who come from troubled families – they do not get the support that they should be getting.
Every five years or so some new challenge comes up that parents and educators need to address – from learning and social disabilities, to mental health issues to gadget addiction. Just when we think we know how to deal with something, a new hurdle comes out of nowhere to slow us down. And it can be very tempting to give up – on the systems or on our students, too. To just throw in the towel and find a new career… something where I’m less emotionally involved in my work.
But if I did that, I wouldn’t be practicing grit myself. And that’s not how my parents raised me. And how my teachers taught me.