This semester, I left the school where I was teaching ESL to focus on my studies. Today, I received an e-mail from one of my former students who I taught for two semesters. He wrote me to tell me that he went around the school searching for me and couldn't find me. He wrote me such a nice e-mail to thank me and asked if he could still contact me when he needs help.
Before I left the school where I taught as an ESL Assistant, some students came up to me to thank me. I left at the beginning of a semester, and one of students had just transferred in 3 days before I left. He was in another class previously, but the instructor from the other class thought that he would do better in my class, which is a lower-level class. We were trying to learn the name of things, and the teacher taught them "television". I knew the student was having trouble saying the word, so I tried to figure out where the problem was. As it turned out, the problem was that he didn't know how to break up the word. I then wrote "TE-LE-VI-SHON" on the board to tell him how to break it up. Then he said the word correctly, had tears in his eyes and said to me in Chinese, "Thank you so much. I've been here for a week now and couldn't understand anything. I was thinking about quitting, but now you taught me something and I understand it. You really have a way with teaching."
These incidents made me feel so good because I've always wanted to be a good teacher and never thought I was whenever I taught my classes. I always thought I was just mediocre and that really upset me. It's such a strange feeling to know that you've changed people's lives more often and to a much greater degree than you think. Please share your stories and inspire us.
