Introduction
We're all born with a set of skills and abilities which we develop as we grow from childhood to adulthood. If we're lucky, we end up with a career that enables us to serve others. I remember the first time I set up my imaginary classroom in the middle of a construction site, when I was about five years old. My family followed a line of disposed villagers whose houses and farms were destroyed in the name of Communist progress, to hastily built flats in the middle of a muddy chaos. While our parents and grandparents were ordered to work in nearby factories and take long bus trips to buy groceries, we waited for basic amnesties to be built for us, including a school for deposed children who wandered among concrete slabs and rusty cranes.
I remembered too, from village times when I played with my cousins and neighbouring kids in Grandad’s precious orchard, pretending to be a teacher. I was the oldest and the only one who had attended the village kindergarten. I used a stick to write letters and numbers on a patch that I'd cleared of weed, while my pupils sat on stumps of old plum trees that my Grandad was replacing with new trees.
Right now, I had a group of pupils of all ages with nothing better to do. They sat on the dirty concrete floor of an unfinished block of flats as I drew with broken pieces of chalk that the builders used to mark corners with. Some older boys threw pebbles at me, calling that they knew more than I did. So I stopped instructing them with my invented alphabet book, reverting instead to another skill, keen not to lose my audience. I started to draw pictures as I told stories. I invented one about a hedgehog that lived in Grand-dad’s orchard. I'd observed his whereabouts during different seasons. The kids were quiet, reflecting on their own lost homes. We imagined the hedgehog trapped under the concrete of the new highway. The older boys who knew how to write, helped me to write an eulogy to our hero hedgehog who died in the name of progress.
A few of the younger girls reflected that although our parents had lost their livelihoods and way of life, we were still alive. At that moment, I realised that teaching is about connection. That discovery stayed with me during my university years and teaching practice, and I eventually gathered enough knowledge and experience to become a qualified teacher.
As I reflect on the students I'd met during my lifetime of teaching on two different continents, I realised that their life stories had enriched me as much as I hopefully helped to broaden their own horizons, discovering the joy of learning and the power of knowledge.
