Teaching Is Harder Than It Looks

UNITED STATES—I tutored for several years as an undergraduate at my university where I taught athletes from all facets of sports. From football to basketball, baseball to wrestling, gymnastics to golf to swimming and everything in between. It was an eye-opening experience for me, one that wowed me in the best ways. However, I learned from my time tutoring that teaching is not easy.

So many of us would like to push the notion, “Oh teachers have it so easy, but the reality of the situation is that teachers DO NOT HAVE IT EASY, it is much harder than it looks and I’m getting a first-hand experience with that. How so? I’m in the deep trenches of my doctoral program and I’m getting some serious teaching experience with undergraduate students.

As a tutor, I took my job seriously, but not as seriously as I’m taking things now, and I truly tip my hat to the teachers out there because it is no easy task America. Perhaps the one thing I’ve learned is that teaching is versatile. There is no clear-cut way to teach and that is because every student is different. You have those who are verbal learners, those who are visual learners, those who are hands on and then you have those that are a combination of all sorts. Yes, I witnessed that a bit as a tutor, but I’m seeing it more as I teach undergraduates.

I do believe teaching something you’re passionate about makes a massive difference. Let’s say teaching philosophy is not easy if you’re not enthused about it versus something like cinema that I can talk for hours on hours end about with minor brevity. I love movies and when I can dig deeper and explore certain aspects of a film, filmmaking or director with students, so they see something that completely goes over their head on a first watch it’s satisfying beyond words.

I will admit the notion of preparing a study guide or lesson outline can be quite daunting to say the least, but at the same time it shows your focus as an instructor. Can you ensure you stay on the topic at hand without venturing off into a territory that is completely irrelevant? All it takes is a student asking a question about X, Y or Z and then it’s a 30 minute to hour conversation that holds some merit, but not as much as it should hold.

With that said, all students learn differently and that is something most teachers have to open their eyes to. There are teachers who are quite firm in their teaching methods where they will not waiver for anyone. Then there are those teachers who bend quite a bit to ensure that if a student or cackle of students don’t understand a particular subject matter, they spend some extra time helping hone on the key focal points. I have seen myself do that and there is no better feeling than when your student ‘gets it’ or ‘figures out’ the important theme of day or for the week.

As a teacher, that is something that absolutely makes you smile, your student understanding what it is that you’re teaching, which is not always easy to do depending on the subject matter. I used to say that all the time to my psychology professor who taught ‘Brain and Behavior.’ Like 95 percent of the students didn’t understand the material and would be at her office hours each week trying to get assistance and this woman just would not budge. She was engrained in how she taught and refused to change for anything, even if that meant most of her students were failing the course. That means as a teacher you’re doing something wrong, and you should want to change it.

I don’t want to be that type of teacher, let alone professor. I want my students to grasp the concepts I’m teaching and harness them for the bigger picture and utilize the knowledge I’m sharing and apply it to their ideas and thoughts. Take what I’m teaching you and propel it to the next level. I know what you’re thinking, is there an age group that is easy to teach or difficult to teach. It all depends. Elementary children can be just as difficult to teach as high school students. It just depends on the crop of kids that you have. You have talkers, you have the shy ones, you have the goofy ones and you have those students who sometimes just don’t care.

Learning is not of importance to them and it can be a brutal gut punch for a teacher, but at the same time, you cannot blame yourself if you have a student who just doesn’t care. I have indeed experienced that before and it was not the end of the world for me. It felt like it, but the realization hit me, “The student just doesn’t care.” And no matter how hard I try nothing is getting thru to them. Yes, I had one of these students and I thought it was the end of the world for me, but a mentor told me, you’ve done the best you can.

You’ve engaged the student, you’ve explicitly laid out your lesson plan, you’re conversed with them, they just have no interest in the subject and there is not much more you can do there. It was a tough pill to swallow, but I ultimately accepted it realizing, I did give it my all. I didn’t just throw in the towel after one, two, three, four, hell, five attempts, I did plenty of trying.

Teaching is a thankless job, and I just want to tip my hat to all the teachers out there who give more than what others can imagine when it comes to educating our children, teens and young adults. They are indeed the future and the information we give them matters. While not always easy, it is indeed important, so kudos to you all.