Being a teacher is very fun

Do you know why I am very enthusiastic when it comes to writing these posts on this website? Well, in the beginning, I have decided that this isn’t going to be a place solely for giving advice or anything like that, but also a place for me to share my personal experiences as well as things that I have done in the past. As humans, we are all imperfect, and I believe that personal stories are worthy of being shared, since personally, I believe that through these things that I’m talking from my personal experience, we can all learn from one another, and that we can develop deeper connections with each other - even if I don’t know who you are, stranger! But, with that being said, in this post today, I would like to talk to you about one of my stories, which is about me being a teacher. Personally, I strongly think that being a teacher/tutor has made me grow a lot as a person, so I hope that through this, it can inspire you at least something - oh well, let’s jump right into it!

Typically, when it comes to students who teach, people may associate them with older ones, probably juniors and seniors in high schools or even college students (because at the end of the day, to become a teacher requires a lot of skills), but my first experience as a teacher comes much earlier than that - in particular, it was when I was in 8th grade. So just for some background information, it was late 2021, and then there were still a lot of coronavirus cases. Because of that, we had to study online, as well as that all public activities are closed. And this was even a bigger problem for Asian parents (I’m not trying to be stereotypical here but oh well): Asian parents typically would send their kids to extra classes, but because of the pandemic they had to rely on online learning, which certainly wouldn’t be very effective. And because in our apartment building there are a lot of kids and families facing this issue, one day I came up with the plan of teaching these students. In my apartment building, there was an online group chat where people could interact with one another, so after sharing this idea to my dad, he sent out an “advertisement” to this group chat. And after this message was sent out, a total of 5 kids were enrolled in my classes. The plan was that these classes would be at my house (it was safe in my building, but we still needed to wear masks, of course, as well as sanitize whenever we were studying), and I would teach 3 days per week: I would teach for 2 kids two days per week, while for the other 3 kids I would teach them once per week.

I actually remembered very vividly the first time that I taught these kids - it was a Saturday, and I actually just came home after getting out for lunch - my dad’s friend just bought a new house, so my family came there to celebrate his achievement. My house has two floors (it was a duplex apartment) and there was a space on the second floor where I would teach these students, but because I wanted it to be a friendly space on the first day, I taught them in my living room - actually, for the first meeting, we were just introducing ourselves and playing games. It certainly was very scary at first (partly because the parents were sitting nearby), but the kids were very cute and enthusiastic, so that was a good thing.

I continued on teaching those kids (oh, and I forgot to say this: there were 4 3rd-graders and 5 4th-grader) for some months, until the coronavirus pandemic got better, and then each of the family started to stop studying at my place. It was certainly a bit disappointing, but honestly it has made me grow a lot as a person.

The next time, I no longer taught a large group of kids anymore, but rather I just tutored students individually. So, in the beginning of 9th grade, my dad was acquainted with this family who lived in the same building as me, and he introduced the son of that family to me. And after the first meeting (where I helped him with preparing for a contest that he was participating in), I continued to teach him for around 7 months, until it was summer and he got busy with his other extra classes. A few months later, a new student came to me: he was a year younger than me, and he was really struggling with math. He was about to change schools, but because of the requirements in order to get enrolled in the new school, his mother came to me for help. And then I helped him, and he eventually got into that school!