Divergent

I amuse myself sometimes. Actually, I amuse myself all the time. I also amuse all sorts of people. But more than being amusing, I also am confusing in terms of my divergent nature, how I fall into several descriptors that differ from initial thoughts of me.

The main descriptor that amuses me and confuses others is the fact that I have decided to embark on an educative journey. It is something that most everyone I meet does not expect. In fact, the last thing they would expect me to be on the journey towards being is a teacher, a role model, an educator. The way I talk, the way I behave and the things that I do scream otherwise and it makes it difficult for people to believe me when I claim that my area of interest lies in the world of academia, of learning to learn to teach.

People simply cannot fathom that a person like me who speaks more street-talk than not will be the director of a classroom one day. They then begin to fit the pieces together when I consistently begin to drop words that are too large for them to comprehend, and soon come to the acceptance of the fact that I may lecture their sons and daughters in the near future. And that is what I certainly love most about myself, the fact that I am not who I appear to be. This can go brutally awful, though.

Not in favour of this amusement is the parents of these little people. If a parent saw me at a party, or at the shopping centre or anywhere else I journey through, they will consider me the last person that they would ever want near their child, let alone the last person they want instructing their child. I have befuddled the parents of the students that I work with, though, on my placement rounds. One particular mother became more obsessed with me than her daughter was. I remember sitting at the back of the car on our way home from an abandoned mental asylum and my cousin turned around and asked me, "why is there an Indian lady smiling at you and waving?" It turned out it was her. Her daughter was asleep in the back of her car, so her mother decided to do all of the waving. I rolled down the window and had a miniature conversation with her across two lanes on a main road - it was fantastic!

My mentor teachers also judge me upon my appearance and my quiet nature and my "unwillingness to show initiative". I soon also amuse them when I start teaching, and I have had several occasions where some of my mentors have become jealous of my bond with the students, particularly one from primary school. I cannot help it. I will not compromise my ability to connect with students immediately so as to not make my mentors look bad. I am there to gain experience and I will "show initiative" in my own ways. 

And that is what teaching is all about, in my opinion. Being divergent. I could not care what the educator of my children will look like, smell like nor would I care that they enjoy listening to rap music and swearing a little too much in each sentence that they say. What I care about is their ability to connect with my child so as to allow my child to confide with them on an educative basis. And that is who I am for children that I teach. Parents need to judge based on practice not on physical presentation.