Teaching: A Means to an End

a reflection on my teaching career

by:

Füsun Atalay ~ Copyright © 1995

When I started teaching twenty-one years ago, I thought,- no I knew- that I was going to teach everything there was to be learned about my subject to generations and generations of youngsters to pass through my classroom doors. I would be fair, I would be just, I would treat my students equally and fulfil all their academic needs.

That was the twenty-three year old, bright-eyed, opinionated, naive young woman who was hired to teach English literature and composition to secondary four and five students most of whom were barely half a decade younger than she. I did not have the credibility or the wisdom suggested by greying hair or wrinkles appearing around the corners of my lips; to compensate I had enthusiasm, energy, the fervor of youth and the naivete of professional innocence.

I presumed, in my eagerness to get on with the awesome deed of educating young minds, that all those young minds came from families like my own which had a mother, a father and maybe some siblings.

That was the scope of cognizance of my audience. At the heels of that speculation followed the noble call that they be taught the perfect writing, spelling and punctuation; the command of compound, complex and compound-complex sentences in their expository, literary and personal essays; the understanding of underlying themes in "Macbeth", "Julius Caesar" and "King Lear"; the use of symbolism and imagery in Yeats, Keats, Pratt and Moore.

This was my call in life, and I was trained and ready to answer it.

Ever since I was a six-year-old debutante in primary school, I had succumbed to the fever of teaching. I remember coming home with the little piece of chalk I sneaked out of the class (the guilty reminder of my theft); writing on the pale green door of my room the letters of the alphabet; summoning my younger sisters to be my pupils; and with the staff of authority— my long ruler at hand— playing the role of the teacher ready to teach even if I had to resort to an occasional diatribe or a whack on little palms for not concentrating on the day’s lesson.

What I saw in class I emulated at home; what I heard I repeated; what I learned I passed on. In retrospect I think I must have done a good job, because by the time I was in my third year, my younger sister who should be starting grade school had learned so much that she was allowed to skip a year and go right into grade two.

Now, at age twenty-three, I was ready to do the same "good job" on a larger scale.

At least, I thought so.

My passion for teaching has not diminished over the years; my bright-eyed idealism- yes. More precisely, the latter has evolved into the understanding and acceptance that, what I revered to do and what circumstances dictated me to do were not necessarily the same.

Twenty-one years later, having taught the entire gamut of secondary school grades ranging from students with special needs to talented and gifted students, I now question who has been teaching whom. I know I have come a long way in finding a fair balance between my ideals and the true needs of my students which have not always been academic.

I know that I am not the only educator who has been taunted with disappointments in teaching and was challenged to turn them into small daily victories.

I know I am not the only teacher who had to be a mother or a sister or just an understanding friend or guide to her students.

I know the times have changed at an incredible pace since the first year I was a pupil; and even faster since the first year I became a teacher.

I also know by now, thanks to hundreds of students who have passed through the doors of my class room, that what makes a good teacher is not only the amount of knowledge she can part to her students, but it is the degree of humanity she is willing to show and share with them.

I grew up with a generation that perceived teachers differently; and that perception was supported by our fathers and mothers most of whom were married to each other and lived with us. As noble as that perception- the reverence for a teacher-, it has ceased to exist as the needs of our society have changed. I still maintain my standards in teaching; however, I have learned to temper those standards with realities to teach the universal basics of humanity and Language Arts.

As a speaker whose acquisition of the English language started at age thirteen, I was puzzled by the expression "the end justifies the means". Ironically as a teacher, I not only understood but I also used that understanding as a principle throughout my career, as I’ve learned to shift my focus from the end itself and pay attention to the means accomodating the particular needs of diverse students.

Now when I look back at a career that has been full of hopes as well as disappointments; frustrations as well as successes; learning as well as teaching , I feel I may perhaps qualify as a veracious teacher. Then in panic I seek a mirror and ask my reflection what I had been doing for the last two decades. A smiling face with reluctant wrinkles appearing at the corners of her lips replies lucidly :

"You have been training for life, my dear, and how lucky you are ! For you’ve had the top notch teachers in your very own students."

Copyrighted Material ~ Copyright © 1995 ~ All Rights belong to Füsun Atalay

Read as welcome address to McGill Faculty of Education students in 1998 _at Centennial Regional High_QC