Teaching Tales

In my growing up years classrooms or teachers were not my cup of tea. I sat reluctantly scribbling notes and often making cartoons on back of my note book. Ah! yes, the back of the notebook was also for exchanging secret notes with my friends that often read "I am hungry," "Uff! She/ he is so boring," and "I wish the next two classes would get free."

Sometimes our wishes were answered since some generous teachers would decide to take an off. Now don't get me wrong. I wasn't one those students who bunked or missed classes. But I wasn't particularly fond of the world of classroom. And I often thought I will be anything but a teacher.

Yet, very recently I landed up in that role. I volunteered to be a tutor for our local library's literacy program. Last week took my first class with my student who is an Afghan woman. Like many immigrant women from South Asia she came here after getting married five years ago. Being a native Farsi speaker she doesn't know English very well and wants to take the first few steps to get her vocabulary, reading, comprehension and grammar in place.

As I sat with her figuring out a way to help her she thanked me a zillion times. It was great to see her sparkling eyes and huge smile. And for the first time I thought "wow, it's all worth being a teacher."