Reaching the End of my Second Teaching Placement - A Poem of Gratitude

This week is going to be a tough week.  It's the last week of my second placement in school and marks another major step towards the dream of becoming a school teacher.  The time has passed by so very quickly.  In fact, this whole year is flying past.  It seems only like yesterday that I was stepping off the plane in New Zealand, having flown from the UK.  Only now, has a year passed since I first submitted my application for university in Wellington, at Victoria University.  One year ago, it was nothing but an uncertain dream.  Now, it is a dream that is approaching reality.

I have enjoyed immensely my time on this second placement.  The class I've been with have been amazing.  It has been a hugely enjoyable and rewarding experience.  At the beginning of this placement, I felt daunted, overawed, and overwhelmed by what lay ahead.  I questioned whether teaching was truly for me.  It would have been so easy to walk away, to follow the urge that told me to do so.  But I did not.  I stood firm and resolute and I told myself that I had to at least see this placement through to the end, and only then would I be in a position to know truly.  It is at times like these when I remember a passage in The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho that describes how we are tested as we approach the realisation of our dreams.  The universe tests us to see whether we are worthy, whether we have learned all that we needed to learn and discover, whether we are certain that this is our dream, and whether we believe in our path.

I am not there yet.  I still have courses to complete at university but one thing is now more certain in me than ever.  I was always going to be a teacher.  I have felt it for most of my life, hearing the call from afar, waiting until the moment when I knew I could deny myself the inevitable no longer.  I do not teach because I can, I teach because it is me, it is my life, and it is my dream. 

Here then, is the poem I wrote to the class as a memento of my stay with them.  I have purposely removed a few verses to protect anonymity of the children.  

A Poem for Room 12

Room 12 has been a truly incredible place to be

It’s full of learning, friendship, and true camaraderie

I’ve had such fun with you all I never would have guessed

I hope you don’t remember me as a terrible, awful, nasty pest.

Remember at the beginning and we made a juggling ball?

I think we had a lot of fun; at least that’s what I recall

Balloons, rice and a little bag, colours and designs were made

Together we ventured out with them and in the playground we played.

We read a book by Roald Dahl called the BFG

About dreams and giants and girl whose name was Sophie

We thought about the dreams we have and whether they could come true

In our books, we wrote them down and shared our point of view.

What imaginations you really have to see such wondrous things

Fluffy unicorns, vampire bats, and a golden boot that sings?

Some were likely, some were certain and some that just could not be,

I thought all were amazing and brilliant, and explored some probability.

When you see yourself in the mirror, there’s a reflection looking back at you

And down the centre, right in between, there’s a line that divides the two

We used contrasting colours and paper folded in two or four

To show our lines of symmetry so they showed up even more.

Cut out a circle of paper and then you fold it one, two three

Take a piece of pizza pie and trace your design so you see

Rotate around, rotate around, rotate around that’s the key

If you fit in more times than one, you've got rotational symmetry.

Now, how to find your way around I wonder if you know?

East, south, west, north, please tell me it’s not so.

The compass needle always points to the north and after that it’s east

Never Eat Soggy Weetbix always remember that at least!

What shapes we found and placed them together with no gaps in between

To make some wonderful patterns, the best that I’d ever seen

Now what do we call it?  What name could it be?

Why it was tessellation of course! Oh silly, silly me.

How do you write instructions, please tell me what you need

Begin with a title that says it all and sows a little seed

Next you add a description and maybe a picture or two

Follow the steps you find below and you’ll know just what to do.  

In the mornings after a little maths we took ourselves under the sea

With a special room 12 brain break created just for you, by me

We looked around, we saw such fish, and wonders of the deep

And after we had finished, there was not a sign of sleep!

We learned about cause and effect on the oceans you recall?

How pollution, over fishing, and climate change are problems for us all

We need to act, we need to think about what it is we do

So in the future this planet of ours we still have seas of blue.

And in those seas the fish will swim and the whales will blow and dive

All of the life below the surface will multiply and thrive

We need the krill, we need the sharks, we need the tuna and wahoo

Because without those last fishy types, what’s the cookie cutter shark to do?

Now here we are, it’s come at last, the end of my short stay

Room 12 you’re the most wonderful people, and I know you’ll always be that way

And even though I’ll be gone, the memories, well they can never fade

Because you created for me, the best most brilliant dream that was ever made.

  _________________________

The Question Remains

I'm sitting in the departure lounge of Sydney airport, waiting for a flight that will take me back to Wellington and New Zealand.  I've flown down from Brisbane this morning after taking a six day vacation staying in Byron Bay.  It was a gift to myself, a present to say thank you, you did it.  It was a chance to recharge my soul after a hard slog through the first half of my post graduate teaching diploma. On Monday, the hard work resumes, university commences after the break that marked the end of the first trimester. Four papers completed, one seven week school placement successfully negotiated, four examinations passed.  The grades are in.  On Monday it begins again. Still I wonder, is this really me?  Is this truly my life's purpose?

How is it ever possible to know the answer to the question unless you try?  I loved my first school placement.  Absolutely loved it. The kids were amazing; we shared some amazing moments; I helped them to learn; I taught lessons in mathematics, French, and social studies; I helped out in PE (physical education), took groups for reading, and assisted in all other learning areas of the classroom.  I recently returned to the school after a few weeks away and the children were very happy to see me, exclaiming that I was the best student teacher ever.  Heady praise indeed.  I try not to think about how many student teachers these eleven and twelve year old's have actually known.  It doesn't matter.  The fact that they told me such things is the most important.  It tells me that we connected, that whatever I did in the classroom and outside in the playground, down in the city at the ANZAC memorial, on the park at the girl's football tournament, at the ten pin bowling alley, and at the trip to the zoo, it must have worked.  It must have been good and it must have been right.  

Not every student told me I was the best but one of those that did was one of the students with whom I had experienced a real difficulty in making a connection.  He often seemed closed off, reluctant to work, apathetic and lethargic.  When he spoke to me and made his proclamation I was absolutely stunned and taken aback.  Perhaps his view is the one I treasure the most because it was the hardest won, even though I wasn't fighting to gain it, just trying to be the type of teacher that I would have wanted. 

It was not an easy placement and I experienced many difficulties.  For example, lessons that I had meticulously planned infrequently didn't quite work out in the way that I had envisaged. Time was a major factor in this - there was never enough of it.  I wanted to take my time, to explore where the children wanted to go, because I wanted to respect their opinions, their desire to ask questions that I had not thought would occur, and to take the lesson into areas that were of interest to them.  Now that I think about it, maybe that was as important as the lesson itself.  Learning occurred in a different way but it was still learning.  We were never off topic, more often just taking a tangent, a minor detour that changed the scenery but did not necessarily alter the overall journey.  For me, learning needs to be a two-way street.  I am a strong believer in the views of William Glasser and Carl Rogers, their views resonated with me deeply, I intrinsically understood what they meant, how they believed the classroom should be maintained.  

Other problems occurred that I would not have envisaged.  One member of the staff expressed very negative views of the teaching profession that I found shocking and which saddened me immensely.  I had not been prepared to find people teaching that did not want to be teaching. I witnessed some incredibly poor teaching methods, students relevant and well-thought questions were ignored and dismissed, and I found that for every very good teacher, there was equally a very poor one.  It was an eye opening experience to what can occur and in retrospect, I am grateful for the experience.  Initially, I wanted to give up but I decided that the children needed better and I wanted to give them that.  I wanted them to see that not every teacher was the same.  I wanted to let them know that I cared deeply about them.  I hope I achieved it.

I raised the question, is teaching my life's purpose?  I do believe that it is.  It is not the classroom nor the thought of teaching that is my concern right now.  Now I am half way through the course, I know that the end is going to fast come into sight.  It is always the way of things.  Just think back to any two week vacation you've ever taken and you'll know that there is a significant difference in the experience of time between the first week and the time of the second week.  It is as if time accelerates the closer we get to the end, like we are being inextricably pulled towards the end, sucked into the vortex of a giant black hole of time.  With the end of the course comes my next big adventure. I will need to make a commitment to one place, something I have not done for ten years.  Perhaps it does not need to be like that. Already, I considered teaching overseas, using it as a means of travel.  Africa pulls at me, South America maybe, back to Central America perhaps?  

So, there is my decision.  I am going to finish the course and I am going to become a school teacher.  Another dream accomplished.  The dream that has been in my heart for many years.  Let's get that job done, let's get through the next five months, four more papers, and one more placement.  Then we'll see how the land lies.  Nothing is forever in this life.  That is the joy of making decisions, of being able to follow the heart.  You have to do what is in the heart today. Tomorrow, well, when tomorrow comes, then maybe we will find another dream, a new dream to pursue.  Until then, I am teaching because of one thing I am sure.  I was born to teach.

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If Only Every Day Was Like This

Today marked a momentous day in my life.  It was a day that I approached with a mix of excitement and fear.  It was a day that had been a long time coming, a day that I thought would never come.  That constant nagging thought, the long held desire of my heart, the incessant calling that would never leave me, that urge to fulfill a dream... Now there could no longer be any doubt, no more debate, no where else to run.  The day of discovery had finally dawned.  Today was my first day of placement for my school teaching experience.

As the children filed into the classroom, I sat on my chair at the front of the classroom and I began to wonder whether I could do it?  My fear began to rise.  I knew that at some point, I would have to get up and go and get involved, to engage with them, and to begin to get to know these strange alien creatures who I was going to be with every day for the next seven weeks.  How were they going to react to my presence?  Were they going to ask me questions that I would not be able to answer?  Would they make comments and backtalk me?  These children were older than I had ever expected to teach.  In the English state school system, primary school finishes at year 6 (age eleven) and at this point the children move up to secondary school.  Now I was faced with a mixed class of thirty two year 7s and 8s, who made up one class of a New Zealand intermediate school, which is classified here as primary.  When I had discovered this was my allocated class for the teaching experience I had been thrown, as it was far from my expectation. At 8:50am this morning, I was well and truly out of my comfort zone.  Theory is one thing, I love learning, I lap it up.  But practice?  That's a whole new ball game, it's what truly separates the men from the boys.  As my first manager once said to me, "Cometh the hour, cometh the man!"

I did get up and I did engage with the children.  The fight was only in the initial standing up because once I had done that, I really had nowhere else I could possibly go.  That was the moment when I knew I would be alright.  I didn't stand up because I thought that I should, I stood up because I wanted to engage with the students.  I was deeply curious and I wanted to help and to begin to answer my life's call.

Walking over to the first desk, I squatted down between two students, lowering myself to their level, and asked them how they were getting on and what were they were working on?  They replied and showed me their work.  We talked about it, I asked if they needed any help.  One of the students was working on a cryptic crossword and couldn't figure out some of the words.  We looked at it together and puzzled over it.  I could quickly deduce the answer but I didn't want to tell him, I needed him to find it for himself because that was the learning experience.  I asked him to look at how he had solved some of the other clues so that he could see the pattern, then I asked him to look again at the clue he was stuck on.  The light started to come on.  It was obvious.  He verbalised his thinking process and closed in on the answer whilst I waited patiently and nudged him to keep going with those thoughts, because they would lead him to the answer.  Bingo!  There it was.  So, we tried another one, same process again.  I knew that this was it.  This was what it was all about.

I moved on, spoke with other students, engaged with them on their work.  English literacy lesson came to a close and the classes split into academic levels for maths class.  My associate teacher took the higher level maths group and the topic for today's lesson was complex fraction multiplication.  The students were set some examples to work through and I got up and went to visit the desks.  The first student I talked with was having some problems, so we worked through one together.  He got it.  I moved on and found another.  She got it too.  I was making a difference.  The teacher put up a really tough one for them all to work on.  I was with one of the students who was having some problems with it.  We worked it through together and although I was 99.9% sure of the answer we had, that 0.1% remained because it had worked differently from the others, not following the same pattern.  I sat down and crossed my fingers that when the answer came I had it right because I couldn't face knowing that I had taken a student down a wrong turn.  And when the answer came and with some relief I saw that I had been right, the student got up and walked over and high-fived me!  What a moment.

The rest of the day was similar.  I kept making tours of the class, talking to the children, helping where I could or discussing their work with them.  My high-five guy kept giving me a thumbs up during the afternoon.  It seemed that he was extremely happy with our maths problem solving and I think because we also talked about books (he's an avid reader). I used the time to make observations, to try to learn names, to figure out how each student ticked.  

At the end of the day, as they were filing out, the high-five guy came over to me.  "Thank you for the help today Mr Smith.  You're really interesting to talk with."  I was almost speechless.  I didn't expect this at all but I sure did appreciate.  "You're so welcome", I replied, "See you in class tomorrow."  What an end to my first day.  These are the kind of days that remain with you for the rest of your life.  I'll never again experience another first day of teaching experience, but I know that getting through has been truly significant and a momentous occasion.  I'm sure that not every day is going to be like this.  There are going to be some tough days ahead and some frustrating moments to come.  For now though, I can look back on my first day and smile.  Maybe not everyday will be like this but as long as I follow my heart, then I know that they are going to come pretty close.

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Knowing The Path

Today, I experienced a moment of epiphany.  These moments never quite occur to you where you might believe.  My moment did not come as I stared out across the vast expanse of the ocean, nor did it arrive as I gazed up to the stars of the heavens, there were no snow-capped mountains in view, no deep lush jungle stretching off into the distance, there was no tumbling cascade of a waterfall.  Instead, it came to me as I stood in my kitchen and I poured out my ritual after dinner coffee.  So, just what was this moment of deep realisation about my life, that refused to contain itself, and that rushed at me, before I was able to add the milk to my cup?

There will always come moments when the light shines forth from within.  These times occur when we are most deeply connected with our hearts, when we are in synchronised rhythm, heart and soul as one.  I've experienced moments of epiphany before and I've written about them previously - standing in the middle of a square in Budapest, sitting on the wall at the waterfront in Wellington.  They never come when we expect them, they arrive unbidden, a moment when it feels as though lightning has struck you, or someone has turned on a light in a darkened room.  I know these moments because when they dawn on me, I cannot stop myself from smiling with a deep sense of pleasure and joy, I want to laugh, to shout and to sing out loud.  This can only come from the knowledge that the thought that is now in your head, originated in your heart, that the thought is the very essence of who you are, who you are meant to be.  That thought is you.

For many years of my life, I was in denial of who I was, who I was born to be.  I was not myself.  I was an imposter, or rather, the imposter was me.  I acted out the life of another person because that is what I thought I should do.  I was a good actor because I fooled many people, I fooled myself.  I could not admit to myself the very thing that it was that I wanted the most in life.  Why?  Simply because I was afraid of what it would mean to me, I was frightened of the consequences.  I lived a life where on the surface at least, I appeared to be happy, but underneath, I never truly was.  My true self was buried deeply within me, covered over, so that it was carefully hidden away, lest it should escape.

I could not have been more wrong.  The journey of my life, the story of my life, is essentially one of discovery.  It seems to me that life had a plan and it was not going to let me go quietly away.  Through so many seemingly random events, meetings and happenings, life found me, it caught me in its grip and it would not let me go.  Life reached through to my inner being, it touched my heart, and it rekindled my desires and my passions.  No, not rekindled, since it implies that once there was a fire and I do not recall there ever being a fire in my soul before life took hold.  But once it did, I was like a piece of driftwood, caught up in the current of a river and unable to reach the shore.  I had to go wherever the water of life took me.  Everything that happened to me, the good and the bad, became necessary parts of my journey, shaping me, helping me to learn, to grow, and to evolve my soul.  This river brought me to a place in my life where I was finally ready to admit to myself who I really was, and to become the man I had been born to be. 

Since this time, I have lived my life as deliberately as possible.  As Henry David Thoreau wrote in Walden; or, Life In The Woods, "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life..."  I have made decisions to do those things that I wished to do, no matter how ridiculous or foolish they might seem.  My journey has taken me around the world, I have been a backpacker, a dive master, a full time student, a project administrator, a charity street funds collector, and a diving instructor.  I have lived for a time in Malaysia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada and Costa Rica.  I have visited and had short stays in many countries in between.  I have experienced things I never dreamed were possible.  And I have met many wonderful people.  All of this was possible because of one thing: I dared to try.

Back to now.  Nearly eight years since my true journey began, I have found myself wondering what I should do next.  I know full well that I cannot do what I do forever, that the physical nature of the work will take its toll on my body.  I have been giving thought to the need for a retirement plan and a pension, that I will need healthcare in the coming years, that really and truly, I have had a lot of fun and that perhaps finally, it is time to stop and to go and do something far more sensible.  With that in my mind, I have begun to think seriously about becoming a school teacher.  It is something that I believe I would be good at, since I love passing on my knowledge and helping others to learn and to grow.  I have even been complimented on my patience, care and teaching skills.  It seems to be a good fit, a way of returning to normality, of a secure future with a steady income.  But something just hasn't felt right.  As much as I believe I would make a good teacher, the thought of it has not fired me with enthusiasm, the way that I fire up when I talk of scuba diving, the ocean, care for the environment, or travel.  I have been puzzling over why not, when teaching would appear to make so much sense?

This evening, as I stood at my kitchen counter, coffee slowly filling my cup, my moment of epiphany arrived.  In that moment, I knew the path of my life and I knew why teaching is not right for me at this time.  More than this though, this thought that came to me hit me hard, and I smiled because here at last was the truth.  Life is short.  Our time on this planet is but a fleeting moment in which to make our mark and to leave behind our legacy.  There are things that I want in my life: a wife, children, dogs, cats, a family.  Right now, I do not have them.  Why do I want to return to the lifestyle I had before, where I was conforming to what society expected of me, when it went against my true self?  I know that it will make me unhappy.  It will slowly but surely tear my soul apart and it will destroy me.  All that I have learned will be lost, forgotten, and things will be just as they once were, before I began.  I cannot let that happen.  I will not let that happen.

There will come a time when I must forsake this particular part of my journey.  This I know to be true.  That time will come when I have need to take care of something more than myself, when my purpose in life shifts to the provision and care of others - my wife and my children.  Until that time, I am going to go on doing what I have been doing.  I am going to see the world, to travel, to enjoy new experiences, meet new people.  I am going to continue to take a chance on life because I do not know when my last day will come.  I am going to have an adventure.

Thinking of this makes me happy.  Knowing why I have struggled over the last months to understand my direction in life brings me great comfort.  I am still going in the right direction.  Life it seems, is not yet done with me, nor I with it.  The road less travelled beckons to me still.  My heart is singing right now, it is joyful, hopeful and it is ready to go on again.  One day, my heart will be joined by another and when it is, we will journey together, we will make our adventures to share with our children.  And at the moment that she enters my life, those two hearts that have beaten for so long in separate rhythms, will beat to the same tune.  There will always be two hearts, but from that moment on, there will be only one soul.

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Do You Believe In Signs?

The other day at work, I was talking with the hotel concierge in the lobby, when an elderly guest approached.  After he had finished speaking with the concierge, he turned to me and told me that he had thoroughly enjoyed watching me teach scuba diving the day before.  He told me that he thought I was a very good teacher, because I possessed the right qualities for it: knowledge and skills in my subject matter, enthusiasm, and patience.  We talked some more and he told me his name was John and that he was himself a teacher of many years standing.  I thanked him for his compliments and I told him that they meant a great deal to me, as I was thinking of going into teaching formally as a high school teacher.  What he said to me next was the sign for which I had been seeking.      

For many of us, making tough decisions is a difficult process.  I know that at times, despite everything that my heart is yelling at me, despite all of its urges, I feel completely unsure and afraid of the consequences, afraid of the unknown that lies down the particular path I am considering.  Even if I know and understand the logic and rationale behind the decision that must be taken, I still feel a deep sense of trepidation.  When this occurs, I feel the need to seek out something illogical, something mystical, something spiritual.  It is as though some primeval sense demands it of me.  I start to look for something that will show to me the rightness of the decision that I am going to make.  I begin the search for a sign.

A sign.  It shows us the way to go, it tells us the direction to take.  Without them, we would quickly become lost.  Imagine driving down the highway and not having any sign posts to show you which exit you needed to take.  You could guess and you might be right, but until you turned off and tried one of the exits, you would encounter uncertainty and doubt.  Life is like this too.  Throughout our lives, we are taught to read signs of all kinds.  A smile means that someone is happy, dark clouds gathering on the horizon means rain, a feeling of thirst means we are dehydrated.  To get through life, we need to know the signs, to be able to read them, and we need to be able react to them.

For sometime now, I have had the idea of becoming a teacher running through my mind.  To tell the truth, it's been there for many years as an idle thought, perhaps nothing more than a curiosity, since I was ten years old.  More recently, it has begun to turn into something more, it has started to grow wings.  This is an idea that keeps on coming back to me, time and time again, it seems like I cannot rid myself of it and it cannot rid itself of me.  If I were to go through with the idea, it would mean a significant life change and a commitment.  It would mean turning my back on my current life and turning instead to something completely new - a path that is unknown and dark to me.  I am afraid of this idea because of what it means, but at the same time, I also believe that it is something that I must do, something important for my life.  To help me with my decision, I have been on the look out for a sign to show me the right way.

The other day at the hotel, John came as the bearer of that sign.  In those words that he spoke to me, I knew the rightness of the path that lies ahead of me.  We cannot create the signs, they have to come to us of their own free will.  There are days when we are desperate to find the answer for which we urgently seek and we see nothing.  Those are the times when we feel as though we have been deserted and left to our own devices.  Sometimes that is a sign in itself.  There are certain decisions that can only be made between you and your heart.  There need not be any other external factor involved.  Other times, we look and we are rewarded.  I remember a time when I was alone in Malaysia.  I had just separated from my partner and travel partner and we had decided to go our own ways.  I was travelling back to the Perhentians Islands to continue my scuba diving education.  On the boat from the mainland across the South China Sea to the islands, I felt lonely, sad and afraid of what was happening.  I can remember looking over the side of the boat, towards the bow to watch the white water that sprayed up as the boat cut through the ocean.  There, in the spray I saw small rainbows, brilliant colours of arcing light that just hung there, motionless, as if they had been waiting for me.  It was the sign that the decision that I had taken was the right one, I felt a sense of peace sweep over me, and my heart felt at ease.

Sometimes we misread the signs, we see only those things that only exist in our own truth of a situation.  How many times have I made the mistake of believing that a girl I liked very much and was giving me lots of attention, was attracted to me?  I figure that because of the attention, this girl must really be in to me, so I decide to ask her for a date.  The reality is that she is only being her usual friendly self and is this way with everyone.  I misread the signs because I saw only what I wanted to see, not the reality and the real truth of the situation.  I am completely unable to read women - period.  They remain a complete enigma and a mystery to me, but that is for a different post.

A sign reinforces our point of view and helps us to feel more comfortable with our decision.  Whether we like it or not, humans have a deep need to establish a spiritual connection, to believe that something exists that is greater than ourselves.  We are part of this great mystery of life, we are part of the miracle.  Signs hep us because they meet our psychological need for reassurance, that a greater power is willing us to go in a certain direction, that we are being helped along our path.  Maybe none of this is correct.  Perhaps it is all too easy to make the pieces fit, to look back with hindsight and to make certain things become the truth.  Would my life have turned out exactly the same if I had not seen the rainbows that day?  Perhaps it would, perhaps it would not.  It really does not matter.  All that matters is that I believe that life places signs in front of us to help us, to guide us, to show us the way that we need to go.

The other day at the hotel, John was the bearer of my sign.  When I told him that I had long thought of becoming a school teacher and that I was now seriously considering the idea, his words held meaning for me.  "It is your calling", he said.  And you know something?  I truly believe that what he said is right.  John is an angel, a messenger that came to me, that spoke the words that my heart needed to hear.  I do believe in signs, do you? 

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