I've been teaching English for a couple of years. In my observation, I have recognized that there are some moments when it seems like something crucial for my career is about to happen. It's like a random student will come to me tentatively with some kind of desperate energy that says they've finally admitted defeat! And obviously they'll ask for subtle help. I can feel it looking into their eyes and a weird kind of vulnerability in their voice.
However, at that very moment my heart sinks into a little oblivion, because I've learned something that I think nobody will tell you about teaching. The thing is;
knowing what to do and being able to make someone else do it are not the same thing at all!
A couple of months ago a student came up with such a kind of issue. Let's imagine his name was R. I knew him as a genuine intelligent folk. But the issue was with his essays. His essays can be easily compared with chaos! I call them brilliant chaos! It was like watching someone try to play chess while riding a bicycle. I think you can get the idea of what I'm trying to say. Generally, I try to give feedback whatever my students come up with for assessment.
I gave him feedback too; and most importantly they were a bit detailed and sometimes specific as well. I sent him to our senior instructors with his write-up asking for a better assessment. Moreover, I sat with him in my teachers' lounge and we talked through structure, through clarity, through the actual architecture of a fruitful essay.
And his next essay? Guess what; it was slightly better. Then again back to chaos.
After the third round of this scenario, I was a bit disturbed and finally asked him directly: "Dear R, do you actually want to improve your writing or you've planned to go with the flow?"
With an almost offended look this lad strongly said, "Of course Sir, I do."
"Then why aren't you implementing any of my given suggestions?" I asked.
He didn't have an answer. Not because he didn't care or he was lazy. But because there was something in him—some resistance, some competing priority, some deep-seated doubt about whether he was capable of change—that was stronger than his stated desire to improve.
And I had to sit with that failure again and again. Because it felt like a failure to me, even though I'd done everything my teaching principle promised: clarity, patience, guidance, resources. And guess what, the real scenario is I've led the horse to water but the horse wouldn't drink!
We live in a culture that is increasingly built on the idea that if only we had better information, we'd all make better choices. We're now literally drowning in access to vast knowledge, to advice, to self-help frameworks, to TED talks about how to be better humans. The internet is truly a vast thing, the glittering library of our answers. For every problem there has a tutorial. For every weakness there is some kind of a a program to fix it.
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©chrysanthemum