I am a bad teacher.

Two years ago one of my first assignments in graduate school for education was to write a paper detailing my educational values, my teaching philosophy so to speak.  My professor, who to this day I still treasure as one of the classier, smarter and more caring women in the world, explained that it was this question which her professor asked her so many years back that stood as a pivotal moment in her professional thinking.  So she asked us in the hopes that it would begin us on our own roads, and if not begin than at least clarify.  I was not interested in either beginning or clarifying my road.  I climbed aboard the teaching ship when I was fifteen years old and 11 years later I was just as passionate, just as committed, just as thoughtful and just as clear as when I began.  Of course, both literature and experiences had informed my philosophy over the years, but the basic tenets, the philosophy was the same.  

I sat down at my computer a couple of times to tell my teacher what those values were, what the philosophy was, but it seemed wrong, as in useless and trite.  It didn't really matter if she knew what my philosophy was--a philosophy only really matters to the person attempting to live by it.  More than that, the whole enterprise felt trite.  Love and respect as values are powerful, but as words terribly overused and rendered void of meaning.  I decided to focus more on the point of the assignment.  It seemed to me that a written statement of one's values is not necessary while one is living according to them, when one is walking along her path, but rather terribly important when she has strayed.  There are enough seasoned and haggard teachers out there who claim their transformative intentions when they set out to terrify me of the possibility that I could one day join their ranks.   So, instead of writing an essay on my educational values to clarify my present, I wrote a love letter to my future.  Assuming that one day I risked becoming a burnt out, frustrated and confused version of myself, I wrote a letter to remind me of my beginnings, to help me find my path once more.  I never thought I would need to read it within the first month of becoming a classroom teacher.  I never thought that future would come so soon.

But in the first few weeks of teaching English to two classes of Turkish five year olds, I am remorse to say that I have become that which I hated.  I have yelled at children, I have become angry at them and with them.  I have partook in singling children out to punish them in front of their classmates.  I have demanded that they LISTEN TO ME.  SIT DOWN. SIT PROPERLY. FOLD YOUR LEGS. LOOK AT ME. HANDS IN YOUR LAP. HANDS UNDER THE TABLE.  I have demanded that they accept my version of their worlds, not because they respect me but because they are afraid of me.  I have insisted that what I deem important is important, that sitting and cutting and pasting pictures onto paper is more important than what they deem important.    I have denied them agency over their lives in "our" classroom in almost every encounter they have throughout our school days.  And as much as its hurting them, which I believe it is, it is killing me.