THERE is no mistaking the words on the side of my lab bench. Even my well-past-forty eyes can see these eight-inch-high letters scrawled in indelible ink.
I don’t say a word as I make my way back to my place. The class is busy writing up lab reports. There is time to think.
As I sit there, I realise what a monster I have been to my two ‘worst’ classes. For the first time in my teaching career, I resisted trying to understand my students. I just wanted to be a bulldozer. Several times I could sense the Lord telling me, "You could be more creative. I could show you a few new ways to reach them, if you’d only listen to the first one for a start."
I didn’t want to know. I kept my heart hard. And so in August 1995, one of my students delivered his verdict of a teacher with 25 years of experience and only six years to retirement.
Thankfully, I had been through enough to realise there was a message for me. I resisted seeing it as something vicious. I knew I had to take it seriously.
"Grow Up" meant I had been childish. So how was I childish? Flaring up under the slightest provocation is the kind of immature behaviour one expects from children. My students were right to expect much more from their 49-year-old Biology teacher. More patience. More graciousness. A more generous perspective of what it is to be 17 years old with a limited interest in photosynthesis or the functions of the human skeleton.
It was already August, so I only had two or three months to redeem myself. I began to take more care with these classes. I began controlling my tongue and tried to organise the two periods in a more meaningful way. Instead of bullying them into doing this…this…this…I tried to have a little more regard for them.
I don’t know whether they noticed the change, but after re-thinking my own attitude, I seemed to apply the brakes instinctively. By the end of the year, some of these students were my friends.
The thing about youngsters is that almost all of them forgive you. Very few kids actually end up hating a teacher unless the teacher has been hateful. That message helped me realise how awful I must have been. I didn’t investigate the incident although at least one teacher told me I should. The school had a policy of pursuing students until they owned up. This time the teacher had to own up.
My lab assistant was so embarrassed for me that she wanted to paint over it. I told her, "No, no, no. You leave it there to remind me." That was effective because I still had a few years left in school. I used that lab every week, and whenever I passed the place, I looked at it. It was a very good reminder.
When God Gives You a Present, Open It!
When I retired, I had so many retirement presents that it was difficult to keep track of them. Only last week I noticed another one. It was a very pretty box with a ribbon tied around it. I hadn’t even opened it. I lifted the lid and found a beautiful, expensive cookery book inside.
When I put the book down, my eyes fell on a little note with tiny handwriting: "A special box for a special present for a special teacher made specially with the sincerest heart." It was from an Upper Six boy whom I had never even taught. I examined the box and admired his craftsmanship. I knew he was an artist but it was really good.
After hunting high and low for his phone number, I finally managed to contact him and say, "I’ve just opened your present and I’m absolutely delighted."
Perhaps life is like this too. If we receive something and don’t open it, we can’t benefit from it. Any instruction from the Lord has to be opened - by reflection, by honest examination, and by coming to the point where our will is involved in making a response.
The "writing on the lab bench" episode made me an eager learner. If I had decided to take the message badly or negatively, and refused to respond, I would have been the loser. After all, it was not unbiblical. "Grow up" is a call to every Christian all the time. Grow into maturity in Christ. What difference did it make whether the call came from "naughty’ students or from the pulpit? Why should I distinguish between the two?
Thanks to that wake-up call, I eventually retired happy and fulfilled rather than embattled and embittered. The boy who wrote that saved himself and saved his teacher as well.
If Puan Kua did grow up, credit must go to my pupils. They have always been my teachers. I think that’s the best part of being a teacher. You don’t have to be a "know all’. It’s very, very tedious and very dull to be your own know-all. It’s a lot more fun to learn from your pupils and The One Who Really Does Know All.
PS
Women to Women asked Kun Han what she has been doing since she retired (read re-tyred). Her answer:
Holidaying, Catching up with old friends. Last year I worked on the 2nd postal (national) Bible Knowledge Quiz and the 5th (oral) Interstate SPM BK Quiz. I’ve also been visiting teachers, both out of town and local, encouraging trainee and undergraduate teachers and promoting teaching as a career. This year, I shall be travelling more with Indy (TCF Staffworker), working on the 3rd Postal BK Quiz and the 6th SPM BK Quiz.
Volunteer work is great!
This is an extract from an article published in Teachers’ Christian Fellowship Malaysia
In Step Volume 13 Issue 4,2001. For more information, please contact TCF Office: 03- 56375623
Kun Han and her husband, Micky Kua, worship and serve in the Cornerstone Doulos Church, Petaling Jaya. They have three grown-up children. Around the country Kun Han is the BK Quiz woman. |
