05/10/2024
Teaching foreigners is challenging. But why teach if you fear? You teach, therefore you know how to. Just then you need more exposure to try all the formula to get the best combinations of teaching principles and approach to make your students learn and appreciate coming to your class every single day. There's no such thing as instant, so your success in the field of educating people lies in every experience and lesson learned.
This reminds me of my first year as an employee in a foreign school where I had to teach Asians the international language. My sched was almost always changing becoz students could not stand the way I handled them for the first place. I might either sound strict or just did not know how to teach them. Until the setbacks turned into my stepping stone to be one of everyone's favorite instructor. Indeed, the journey that had gone bumpy and tough sharpened the skills in me to fully understand the how to's, the do's and dont's, and even the why's of every failure in the past. Aside from the language barrier, diversity in culture was difficult to understand until I tried to study all about it. And the pain turned into gain, and emptying a cup always pays off. And then I was so thankful for it.
I would not be writing it if not becoz of what I had gone through all throughout the fresh year of being a teacher at the age of 20 :) Until such time, my foreign students would be bring me expensive gifts, take me to high-end restos and coffee shops for just a mere date (it means they just want to have a time getting to know you better as a person) as token of appreciation every time their student visa expires (they need to go back to their country). And it was always a privilege to be a language teacher to a foreign doctor, a foreign entrepreneur, a retired military, a trader, a professor, and a strict Chinese businessman. All of which possessed different personalities any my stereotype a Filipino like me until I was able to bridge the gap and win them a students.
Nothing comes easy especially if you mean to reach something that's hard to achieve. Yet the hardest to get seems to be the best catch you'll ever have :)