04 Aug How I Became a Teacher

The text reads like a chapter from an autobiography or a conversion story, because it is both 🙂

I grew up in a household of two teachers who were actually quite good at incorporating their professional best practices into the education of their own progeny, successfully mixing seriousness with more playful strategies. Whenever I returned home with a failing grade, my father rewarded those rare mishaps with a dollar, turning my school-related misery into a fun joke and making my schoolmates envious. I thrived academically. My mother’s pedagogical touch was of a completely different sort. She did not coach us academically (we were largely self-propelled), but made sure we were disciplined and committed outside of school, preferring control over trust, which started to frustrate me in my teenage years. I was a little too quick to conclude that her attitude derived from her professional role of a middle school teacher. Because I failed in my attempts to win her trust, I resolved somewhere along the way that being a teacher made one too controlling of an individual and I didn’t want to be one. I wanted to adopt a more nuanced approach to life. My interests were also markedly different; I was the only family member endowed with a passion for languages and literature. Reading and writing certainly allowed more room for creativity and fun compared to the sciences. Thanks to a family friend, a college professor, I discovered that there’s a world of literature and poetry to discover well beyond the school canon.

Lest my readers think that my resolve never to be a teacher was entirely justified, let me clarify that my mother trusted me enough to let me leave for the States and Canada to pursue my studies on my own. Now that I think of it, I realize that it would have been out of character for her to be reassuring and soft. She’s just not that type of person.

University, a planet inhabited by hordes of teachers, revealed my clear preferences and standards regarding lecturers. There were some professors I heeded, and some I avoided at all costs, based on inexplicable gut feelings. I felt intuitively drawn to teachers who were knowledgeable and morally transparent, especially those with a good clean sense of humor. I loved them to the core, which sometimes resulted in platonic crushes. On the other hand, I tried to avoid unnecessary contact with other professors who were overly cynical, nihilistic, dérisoires or indecent. Finally, I hated those who would stumble into the classroom devoid of clear purpose. One literature professor from my MA program was so blasé that he once candidly admitted, ‘I actually don’t know why I’m here to teach you this morning, and what for.’ The horror.

Human factors aside, I was always keenly aware of the class atmosphere. Despite the high- quality education I received, I found some classes boring. I recall one particular French literature course which just dragged on and on. One afternoon after class, I confided to one of my fellow students that I would never ever want to be a French literature teacher. Ironic, given my love of literature and my intention to pursue the field. It’s difficult to reconcile the dynamics of one’s eureka moments (so typical of reading) and the duty to teach literature in a more systematic, lucid way, so as to engage students in the process. Although I have all the necessary qualifications to be a French teacher now, I would still find teaching literature a challenge. This topic attracts me like a magnet, however, demanding that I address it in due time. The more one learns about literature, the more daunting the prospect of teaching literature seems; both because of the nature of encounter with the text (deeply personal) that cannot be communicated and of the everything-but-literature approach of many contemporary literature departments.

I will elaborate on this on a different occasion.

The more qualified I was, the further away I drifted from the idea of a teaching career. Since comparative literature allows students to pursue any interdisciplinary topic as long as it is examined with the tools of literary or cultural criticism, I found my niche at the crossroads of literature and cultural diplomacy. I studied the cultural diplomacy of Quebec in Europe and compared how Quebec was promoted in four different countries. It was more than a pure cultural exercise. I met real-life diplomats and I saw them at work. Most were committed and inspiring. I felt that I could embark on a meaningful mission one day and it seemed like a reasonable perspective and a great career path. I even talked to some children of diplomats and asked them about the dynamics of their family life, just to make sure I can have it all. Having completed my thesis-related interviews in London, Paris, Munich and Warsaw, I applied for an internship with the Polish Consulate in Montreal.

The consulate internship was good, but not as good as I had hoped it would be. One needs to acknowledge that it wasn’t the easiest time in my life. I was exhausted from my studies, plagued by financial challenges and struggling with the merciless Canadian work permit red tape. The consulate staff were kind and did a good job welcoming us, the interns. It felt good to speak Polish and tell jokes in Polish again. The work, however, seemed rather tedious and repetitive. Perhaps I had come expecting fireworks where there were just simple lights to be lit. To my chagrin, I was not involved in cultural diplomacy initiatives. After a few weeks, I started to think that cultural diplomacy might be passé and matters little in the cultural rapport between two nations, given the dynamics of an increasingly globalized world which offered countless opportunities for non-official cultural interaction and exchange. I didn’t know whether cultural diplomacy could be done meaningfully, or if it was just a mechanical programmation culturelle. Surprisingly, despite my informed passion for the subject, I lost my previous desire to become a diplomat.

Fast-forward a couple of years (2008). I had my first office job, which wasn’t a good fit, but was a valuable experience in many ways. Before Easter, I went on a great retreat that I had accidentally found out about. The outside-of-Montreal event unfolded half in French, half in English with lots of international youth, including a sizable group of Middle Eastern Christians. Most folks were young, but a few attendees were in their forties or fifties; perhaps those older folks helped to oversee the project. Everything was done beautifully and simply. I remember a late night adoration and a delightful evening of comedy skits. There was some time left to socialize with fellow participants. It was during one of those social breaks that I noticed a kind-looking lady in her fifties. I don’t even remember whether she spoke in French or English, or alternated between the two (this particular memory gap strikes me as strange, as I tend to remember such linguistic details). She was surrounded by young people. I instantly noticed how much she cared for them and listened with utmost attention. It struck me that she seemed extremely young in spirit. Mind you, she didn’t try to act younger or impress those youths at all. I later found out she was their teacher. That bit of info, far from exotic – teachers are all over the place, for goodness’ sake, and there had never been a shortage of them in my life! – was of a (surprisingly) great significance to me right there and then. Now I knew I wanted to be a teacher, because good teachers never age.

I realized that teaching, if done well, is synonymous with caring for others and lovingly equipping them for adulthood. I realized that although teachers do not save others in a palpable and direct way (like doctors), their task consists in helping other people to flourish, which is noble and just, if done well. Of course, one still needs to figure out how to teach and constantly question oneself regarding the methods, the outcomes, the big picture, the Divine. Essentially, it is a prolific vocation, as it is about fostering someone else’s growth, living through their educational experience, both of which offer a true anti-aging solution. It is like becoming a parent or a Godparent again and again; not about finding friends or followers. Teaching resembles engraving the image of our souls in someone else’s life, which, as Shakespeare emphasized in his sonnets, is one of the finest ways of combating old age and outdoing death.

So here I am, talking ex cathedra, my fountain of youth.