On teaching and language

I’ve committed a sin of becoming a teacher. Why do I call it a sin? Well, because now everything I do is defined by my profession. It is difficult to learn something when you are a teacher yourself, I mean, you’re not used to being given orders, being told that this is not how something is done, to being corrected.

My father tends to say that teaching is like shit, once you step in it, it’s difficult to get it removed. He stepped in it over 20 years ago and can’t leave the job though he doesn’t like it. My mother doesn’t complain that much but I can see that for her it’s also an ambivalent feeling, what she feels towards the job.

One way or another, teaching runs in my blood, whether I want it or not. I also have it on paper, my teaching license so to speak. I’ve been doing it for four years now and I’ve been watching my parents do it and I know enough to both hate it and love it.

The things I hate are: the fact that my day is hectic and that it’s difficult to draw a line between my private and professional life, and I need that line to be there, otherwise I’m at work all the time, preparing classes and checking homeworks. I also hate the sound of my phone when a text message comes – it usually means that someone wants to cancel or put off classes. The doorbell ringing gives me this feeling of anxiety; it usually means that one person leaves and another comes and when it’s my fifth class on that day, I start to think that it will never end, this migration of people through my flat. The last most annoying aspect is having my day planned to the minute and whenever someone comes earlier, which also happens, it is usually tantamount to my being hungry or unprepared.

The rest, the bigger part it seems, comprises the things I love about it. The fact that people come to you with their doubts and fears and inabilities, and you give them something that makes the very core of people’s existence. You give them language, thereby giving them identity. If they care enough, that is.

And so, there they are, telling me stories about their lives or telling me truths and gossips the world is living with. And I am there too, with my teaching mode on, listening attentively, joking, correcting, being understanding and compassionate or strict, if need be. They and their lives evolve, go on, they become mothers, fathers, they graduate, they buy cars and move to new flats, they change jobs. And I? I just am there, listening. Hardly anything ever changes. I am there, listening to them and at the same time I let my mind wander off their perspective and focus on mine: “Will I still be like that in five years’ time? Will something ever change for me?” Sometimes it’s difficult to be full of stories, none of which is yours. On the other hand, I love the stories they tell, each of them different and each of them informative in its own way, and I listen to them greedily.

Another thing I like in teaching is the passion it awakes in me and the fact that, with my point of view, I have the whole government to battle against. I don’t know why but only presented with an opposition of some kind do I feel alive. Polish system of education is a perfect example of such opposition – nothing is as it’s supposed to be. Such points are usually good starting points – anchors that keep you focused and catapults that help you move forward.

Now, why have I written all that? Before leaving I felt worn out, stuck in a rut, not knowing what to do with my future and generally in crisis. Here, I do miss my friends and family, but surprisingly the thing I miss most is teaching and no matter what I’m doing I feel I’ve been moulded into the teaching form, if there is any, and I can’t get out of it. I don’t think I even want to get out.

I have also written all this to make another point, not directly related to teaching but rather to language in general. Those who know me as a teacher, here I mean all my students who are reading this and those who are not reading this, know that I like to say that if they can’t say something in one way, there are probably a few more ways to express it and that they shouldn’t just focus on one and stay blocked. Before my getting here I knew it was a challenge, to stay open-minded. Now I know that I had lied to them, partially at least. While during the classes, which range from 60 mins to two hours, looking for another way to express what you want to say is a challenge; being in another country and being forced to do it 24/7 is almost impossible. By this, I’m not saying that it’s impossible to find another alternative but rather that it’s impossible to let your thoughts be compromised in that way, to let the complicatedness of them and profoundness of them become belittled by a language which isn’t yours and by the fact that you haven’t mastered it enough. Consequently, every sentence you utter is a compromise. How many things a day do you compromise on? How much do you like compromises, meeting somebody halfway, giving up a part of your views, plans, emotions? Now think about how many sentences a day you speak, and finally think about how many emotions get lost in translation when you can’t find word-emotion correspondence, for example, or any correspondence whatsoever. Should you go on with these pathetic attempts of yours, with this pitiful theatre where you are given lines that are not yours? Should you keep on losing your personality with every inadequate, insufficient sentence you manage to give birth to, mentally lexically and phonetically? I guess many people don’t mind. I do, so I’d rather not speak.