Back to Back Role — a story of a teacher that was once a student in the same school.
It takes a special gift to be a teacher. Anyone can be a student, but those who are willing to share their knowledge at this time of day are very thin on the ground.
Clarita, a 23-year-old fresh graduate in communication studies just happened to start her career path as a business-studies teacher.
What is more unique about her story, she decided to apply to her old school to be a teacher, and now the position is reversed. Having no background in business studies, Clarita juggles her schedule and decided to spend her weekend finishing her tasks as a student in the business management master program.
Keep in mind that not only does Clarita have to manage her busy schedule as a teacher herself, she also needs to manage her roles as a student and a teacher, simultaneously. But this can actually be beneficial for her.
“at first it was quite weird. But then, there’s quite a narrow gap of age between my students and me. That made me understand how the students feel as I have been in that position before.” said Clarita.
Surely, a teacher is a work of heart. Not only a wide knowledge and understanding is needed, but a deep passion is also always required especially in a job that strains your service towards children.
‘My biggest challenge in becoming a teacher is to understand each of the students need. Since they have different personalities and ways of studying, it is hard to determine what kind of teaching or activities suits the students.” added Clarita.
Truly, handling children can be overwhelming sometimes. Though classes are now handled online, it is much more complicated to communicate through a computer-mediated channel. In onsite class, for example, some students may already have a hard time concentrating from time to time, let alone having to listen to the teacher talking on zoom meeting every day. They might even have more distractions around them.
Knowing this, Clarita clarified (pun intended), there is another challenge in teaching online.
“The other challenge of becoming a teacher is to talk with confidence in front of the students. I tend to get nervous if I need to talk in front of the public. But then I overcome this by thinking about how to bridge from one topic to another before each class. This made me more confident in sharing the knowledge.”
Having a public relations degree herself comes in handy to a time like this, however, going fully digital is not what we are all prepared for. If what one thing the pandemic has taught us all is to really adapt and maximizing on what we have.
As a newbie teacher, Clarita tried to improve herself by entering other teachers’ classes, analysing how the class phenomenon might go, and how they handle students. Not only that, but she also learns from her sister who happened to be a teacher of 10 years.
“She always encourages and motivates me, even though I feel like I am not capable of being a teacher after I went through for this several months. She becomes my biggest inspiration,” added her.
Above all, the most important thing about having a job is to love and enjoy it. If we have the heart in doing it, then we won’t get stressed so easily. As Confucius said, “ Choose a job you love, and you will never to work a day in your life.”
