The Best Thing A Teacher Can Do, Is Wait

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I was trying to put my daughter to sleep when she stopped me. She pointed to each and every toy she had that she needed to put to sleep. Thus, I waited, for near eternity for her to put them to sleep before I could put her to sleep. Oh, the irony. Part of me wanted to yell at her and ask her to hurry up. The old me would, but I suppose my career in general has taught me the lesson of waiting. Some may disagree with me, but I think teaching is a 'waiting' game.

There were a few pivotal moments of waiting that made me realize how valuable it is to wait. The first is in teaching swimming.

Swimming

Ever coach has their very own way of teaching a child how to overcome the fear of water. Hydrophobia is one of the hardest things to overcome by a child and it takes a lot of patience. A lot of my hydrophobic students would stand at the side of the pool in the hot summer day and shiver. They shiver as if they were drenched by a bucket of cold water, but the reality is, they are completely paralyzed with fear.

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One of my ways of teaching them how to overcome this is by 'taking the leap'. I place the child at the edge of the pool sitting down. I tell the child that I will make them a deal. If they were to leap forward towards me, the class would end. It doesn't matter if they fail or succeed, as long as they make the leap. The point of this is to establish trust with the student, showing them that they could do it if they succeed and that I would catch them if they fail.

So here's the kicker, the longest I have waited for a student to make that leap was 90 minutes. He stared at me for over an hour and a half and as the sky darkened, he thought to himself that it was either he stayed at the pool the whole night or he make the leap. He now swims rather well, but had I not decide to wait first, he would still be struggling with hydrophobia.

Question-and-Answer Sessions

As teachers we are placed on the clock. We have to complete a set amount of topics within a limited amount of time. Failing to do so would land us into hot soup with the powers that be. Due to the time constraint, we have to speed up the entire lesson at the expense of the students' question-and-answering sessions. Thus, if I ask a question, I expect it to be answered within 5 seconds or I would speed on with the lesson.

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You may be wondering why, but speed is necessary besides if you can't answer my question within 5 seconds you obviously don't understand the answer to my question, do you? Besides, I can't stand the silence, imagine asking a question only to be greeted by silence for a bit. Well, apparently I was wrong on that. You see I received a note one day after class by a student. I did not know who he is but I could guess the identity of the sender. The note pointed out that the sender was unable to understand the lesson. The sender also pointed out how he knew the answer to a question I asked, but was not given enough time to think before I cut him off.

This was a wake-up call for me, I knew the theories. I knew that not every student is the same, some needed more time and others did not. I knew the body language when it comes to someone knowing something and someone who is just thinking. However, I allowed the needs of the administration to surpass the needs of my students' learning. I changed after that, I do wait longer these days but of course, I'm still not going to stare at a student for longer than 3 minutes.

Measuring Success

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There are times when every class seems like a losing battle. You may come home from class defeated and perhaps unhappy with the results of your students' previous exam. To be realistic, I think there is no way of correctly assessing how successful a teacher is until the students have finally left school. This requires a rather long wait but definitely well worth it.

I remember bumping into some of my students on the street and seeing them succeed or doing well is reward enough. While not every one of my students have gone on to be successful, I do think that it is important to remember that the only way to tell if I am a bad teacher is when I finally retire. It is at that point that I look back and evaluate how successful I was. For now, I will just stick with doing my best for the students and as for how successful they will all end up, I will just have to wait.

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