Teachers Are Like Spiderman, Too

            Joseph Landy begins the book with a very appropriate question: Why
teach? Because your parents said so? Because teaching is a profession where you
can sate your hunger for large crowds listening to you? Indeed, why teach? As
if the answer wasn’t obvious enough for those brave few who do decide to become
a teacher, Landy asks again, why teach? And if you answered along the lines of
“financial gains,” then sadly, teaching is not for you. For surely, there are
jobs out there that can pay you better and reward you better (financially) than
a lifetime of teaching can ever match. But that is not to say that teaching has
no rewards, nor any pay. : ) In fact, it can even be more rewarding than any
job you’ll ever have, IF – you love teaching.

Landy gives us teachers (old &
new, and those hoping to be) tips and strategies on how to become a much more
effective teacher. He calls it, “staying alive in the classroom.” Albeit a
picture of a battlefield comes to mind, where generals and commanders alike
(teachers and principals) fall amidst the volley of cannons (student
misbehaviours) and bullets (scathing remarks – of everyone), screaming: until
my last breath!

Most important of Landy’s tips were
these two things. First was his emphasis on continual growth, second his
postscript about teachers having a great power in influencing others and
changing the world. His first advice was more on the
intellectual/skills/knowledge aspect of the teacher. It was an advice on how to
avoid ruts in teaching. In teaching you have to study, in studying you have to
learn, in learning you have to be taught. Never stop learning. Just because
you’ve achieved that post as department head, or perhaps chief executive of
something (CEOs), doesn’t mean you don’t need to study anymore. The more you
have to study further, as the more is expected from you. Likewise, being a
teacher does not only mean you are the only one teaching. It is a two-way
street. Learn from your students, and learn well. For whatever they will teach
you will be a thousand more precious than whatever speck of knowledge you may
have gained in your formal education. Nothing beats wisdom than wisdom gained
from experience.

Teachers are earth-movers. They move
the world in ways unseen. Your students might be tomorrow’s leaders or despots.
We teachers shape the world, and the price for that responsibility is high.
Just imagine if Aristotle had no mentor like Plato, or Plato no teacher like
Socrates, what would the world be like without these brilliant people’s ideas?
What would the world be like if only Hitler was taught compassion and mercy?
What would the world be like if the greatest teacher (Jesus) on earth was never
born?

So an ounce of caution for
would-be-teachers: treat yourselves like a struck match. Handled and cultivated
correctly, your fire can influence others and create a conflagration of change
for the better. Abused and underestimated, your fire can torch down empires and
burn nations to the ground. If we can change the life of one small child, then
surely we can change the world.

MAKE A DIFFERENCE.

Burn,
burn! ‘Coz somewhere, someone might die of cold if you stop burning.