An Exotic Fruit & How do you know if you would like teaching?

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You love kids and you love how they smile and are all so genuine when they greet you or speak to you in the morning. You want to make teaching your job.. But wait! All your close friends and parents ask you to reconsider. They tell you that being a teacher is a horrible job. They claim that it is long hours of work and poor job security. Some would even ask why would you even bother squandering your potential for something so insignificant.

Insignificant...They say. Well, no point convincing others what you want to do when you are sure that teaching is for you, won't you agree? However, what happens if there is this nagging sense of doubt. That little voice that questions your decision, saying that perhaps this may not be for you. That voice asks... What if you make the wrong choice? What if teaching is just not for you.

My answer to that is, you should look to fruits to help you find the answer. I don't mean just any fruit. Have you ever been on a trip and tasted an exotic fruit, only to never taste it again once you have returned home? I have. I came across the egg fruit on my trip to Taiwan, but was never able to find it after I went home. I missed having it so much that I was willing to go through great lengths to get a taste of it again.

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You see, if you have a similar fruit experience like I do, hat experience shares a lot of similarities between knowing if you would like teaching.

The Taste Test

The first time I came across the egg fruit, I did not know if I would like it. I did not understand why anyone would even like this weird looking fruit. It looked like a vegetable which I wasn't very fond of and it certainly did not smell appetizing. That is until I've tried the first bite. To give you an idea, the flesh of an egg fruit tastes like the egg yolk of a hard boiled egg, mixed with sugar. It is a cross between, egg, butter, sugar and at times, sweet potato like texture. I fell in love with the fruit upon tasting it.

The same goes with teaching. You won't know how much you would like it until you have tasted it. Let's be honest, not many people like children. Unless you have dealt with them before, you'll probably think that they are too tedious to deal with, too noisy and too uncool to make a career out of it. I remember a friend once said, if I wanted to deal with children all day long, I won't be a teacher, I would be a parent.

For me, I would suggest taking the opportunity to teach a preschool or a primary school class. It is at these levels that you get a taste of how adorable they can be and how genuine they are in their feelings. Of course, that's not to say it is not fun teaching adults and teens, every level has its challenges and fun. However, it starts by getting a taste of it first. After you get a sense of how teaching can be, you will never look back. I remember teaching my first class of swimming and fell in love with the job. I love how appreciative the children were and how they made me laugh every week. Some had countless excuses to skip class. One of them had a funeral every week and he would try to get out of class by claiming that his grandma passed away. On my last count, he had 24 grandmas.

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Your Desire To Grow This Fruit

I saved the seed of the egg fruit and had a desire to grow it when I got home. I tried my best to get a fruit tree out of it. Unfortunately, it did not survive. It was either my fault or my country's weather. I blame it on the weather. I was quite sad that all my effort and hard work did not pay off. Nevertheless, I tried my best.

You know that teaching is for you if you have that innate desire to grow people. No, I don't mean feeding them. I mean teaching them content necessary for them to become useful members of society. I mean being there for them when no one else would, helping them work through taboo topics that the curriculum and even their parents would otherwise not talk about. I mean being patient to nagadvice them constantly on what they are doing wrong and praising them for what they did right.

If such a desire exists within you then I would say you possess one of the best characteristics of a teacher, which is the heart for the next generation. However, there is the final test to determine if you would like teaching, so here goes...

Organic or Bruised fruits

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Lets assume that the organic fruits are the good students, the ones who are great in class and who grew up in a good family. The bruised fruits on the other hand are the fruits that are usually tossed out. The bruised fruits are akin to the students who grew up in a less than privileged family, the ones who causes trouble in the class, the ones who can be rather disruptive.

Being a teacher, you will have to deal with both these organic and bruised fruits. The question then is this, how do you choose between which fruit to focus on? Would you go for the ones that have the 'organic' label on them or would you go for hose that are bruised? In many cases, a teacher would have to choose to speed up the class by focusing on the advance students or slow the class down for the ones who are less able. So what would you choose?

If your answer to that is to try your best to give everyone equal attention, congratulations! Teaching is for you! No matter how idealistic that answer may be, no matter how impossible it is to focus on all the students in the class, as long as you are willing to try, you will have a very fun and fulfilling career.

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