On becoming a teacher

On becoming a teacher

The other day my eldest asked me quite straight-forwardly? “Why did you become a teacher, Mummy?” A natural question I suppose. I then recall my own mum’s( a former teacher herself) disappointment about 13 years ago when I decided that after 3 years, I was leaving the glitzy, heartless corporate world, ‘to become a teacher.’

So today, I hope to answer my daughter’s question myself.

Many are surprised to learn that I had worked in a notable foreign bank for three years, first as a management trainee then as an account manager servicing clients’ unlimited credit card accounts as well as privilege/priority banking accounts, with my own office to boot, even working under a woman who wished she wore Prada everyday!

Not to digress, my banking stint taught me some lifelong skills, which I find really useful in my career as a teacher in an international school that doesn’t ever stop.

I learnt how to meet crazy deadlines, hit targets, do constant cold calls, work on PR charm and socialize with high nett-worth clients(who had strange requests from enquiring about interest and forex rates, loans, debentures, derivatives, to questioning the safety of our safe deposit boxes, to inviting me to their homes for tea, to removing incriminating transactions(usually for dirty mistresses) on their credit cards before wife no. 1 receives it, advising them about personal matters and even shopping for their Xmas, birthday presents, organize corporate events and road-shows, and once even physically counting loads and loads of cash from a Samsonite suitcase! As a manual teller, I truly sucked, from recollection!

I remember getting a high from dressing up in smart suits, panty hose, and kitten heels and taking the company car to meet clients for power lunches (and shop during lunch breaks if there was time especially during sales) Those were my hey days as a corporate financier. I would earmark every new IPO, read the Economist, the Edge and Personal Money diligently, hawk the Bloomberg channel and was eloquent in talking financial Shop (probably a bit of rot, too) being an English major that I am, who knew the who’s who in the world of MD and CEOS. What a colourful, self-important job it was!


Hence, teaching, compared to the world of high finance must surely be a comedown, you might think. I beg to differ. By the time I left my job I had stopped enjoying it due to sheer boredom, and wanted something fulfilling and more challenging.
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When I chose to teach, I did it because I wanted to have more time. Plus slogging in a 9 to 9 job is no fun especially if the economy is crumbling around you (and in ‘97-99, it sure was)

Like every modern educated, career woman (worse, a married one), there are many things to prioritise in your young life. I had chosen to marry, at a relatively young age of 26. You want your career, you want your financial freedom, you want your cute babies and you want your beautiful home and annual holidays. Let’s face it, you want it all, but papa patriarchy calls out to you, and holds you back, and we’ve all been victims of that one way or another, making sacrifices along the way.

Being a practical Capricorn, I figured I would want to be home for my children DESPITE my career and I landed my first teaching job at a client’s office. Those hard-selling, public relations training at the bank sure worked wonders.

Moreover, with teaching, I figured I would have more time to write, which is something I truly enjoy doing anyway!

Teaching+ Time= Writing? Perfect equation! How wrong I was!

Sure, I have holidays that are the envy of friends but many do not know how mentally and physically hard we work during the term. The minute a new term begins, it’s like a javelin hurtle from one project after another, and I am not just talking about completing a syllabus, or marking homework or coursework. A whole litany of tasks awaits the new renaissance teacher, as many a students have termed us!

We plan, prepare, teach, mark, set exams and analyse results, write student progress reports, record, assess, fill up more data, have meetings, go for INSETS, conduct some sessions, get used to all these modern fangled teaching technology, update our methodological and pedagogical styles, mentor, do duties, run assemblies, attend events, run events, do trips, etc etc. The list goes on and on and I’m sure to have left something out.

But to me, the most endearing thing about teaching is really is about PR of a different kind- more personal relations than public. Every student and child is deserving of our time( even lunchtimes), listening ear and encouragement. Every student’s time is in our hands. Teaching teenagers who range from aged 12 to 18, I have come to sometimes be not only their teacher, but their advocate, their mentor, sometimes friend, a listening ear, their life coach.

English Literature and Language go hand in hand and though I don’t look like a native speaker, I must proudly declare that it is my first language, for I have spoken and written it far longer than I have any other language I know and it is the language I dream and cuss in and think with. How much more ‘native’ can that be??

Errrr...it doesn’t really pay for my uhmm…larger than life closet, or for my numerous holidays
(but that’s what husbands are for :)) but it is very gratifying, in every way. Every lesson can be a challenge and a whole new endeavour.

When my former students who are now my facebook friends catch up, it’s nice to know they are out there- working in highly-coveted high powered jobs in London and New York( saving British & American banks), directing a film, writing a metaphysical novel, taking the Hippocratic oath seriously, designing vintage Jean Rhys-inspired 1920s weddings gowns, publishing their own writing, winning scholarships in Ivy League universities, helping people in need, the list goes on and on. The best news, is hearing that a former student has chosen writing or teaching for their career- out of choice, not necessity! For, after all, if they all became top economists, doctors, lawyers, accountants, engineers, and the like, who would teach their children?

So, darling S, that’s why Mummy became a teacher, to be a better, working Mummy and to grow along with my 80.1 students every academic year, whom I learn from!
And Mummy, I hope you’re finally proud that I have chosen to teach.

After 11 years of it, teaching has become me. And I love it.