A cup of gratitude
The inspiration for this post came to me during my first lesson last Friday. One of the students in the group of young women prepared a cup of coffee for me. All my students quickly recognize my love of coffee and most of them are kind enough to feed my addiction to affection for this divine drink regularly. But coffee is not what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about gratitude. About my gratitude for everything my students have given me over the years.
I first started teaching in the last year of my MA studies. I can tell you straight away that despite almost graduating , I had little to no idea what I was doing back then. Yes, I knew a lot about the language, its grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation. I did lots of lesson planning. I worked hard. What I didn’t know enough about was the most important element in teaching. When you’re writing a piece of text, the most important person in the whole process is the reader. Similarly, the most important factor in (my) teaching is the student.
It’s taken as a matter of course that students learn from their teacher. But being young and inexperienced I knew nothing about how much my students were going to teach me. Only much later did I understand that teaching goes both ways and I consider myself extremely lucky to have the opportunity to work with so many kind, interesting and gifted people in my teaching career so far. They put their trust in me and let me into their lives. I’ve realized many times that some of them see me more often than their good friends or family members. We exchange stories, quite personal ones too, and when we’re sitting face to face for 60 or 90 minutes week after week, there’s little to be hidden. Joy, worries, saddness, excitement, trouble in our lives – it’s all there (sometimes whether you like it or not).
Over the years, many of my students became my teachers in different ways. They gave me lessons on kindness, humility, slow living and many other topics. And all those small things like the cup of coffee with a cute note mean a lot to me. Really. I came to understand that my job is not only about the correct tenses or collocations. And sometimes it’s not about the language at all. It’s about true human connection. And I’m really thankful for that.