Like most students, I worked as a part-time student to be able to help with the financial needs in my study. I experienced a sociological change in me in one of my part-time jobs. I worked as a waiter for quite some time already by I felt normal and there were no “difficult” challenges I experienced. However, when I worked as a part-time teacher for a young Korean kindergarten student, I felt the other way around.
Personally, at first I wasn’t confident that I would be an effective teacher. I was teaching not because it is my passion but because I needed the job. I was assigned to teach a shy kindergarten boy who didn’t even talk. It was hard. I started thinking of backing out because I don’t know how to start teaching the kid. I didn’t know the reason either, why the small boy behaves this way. Because I don’t know what to do anymore, I approach the mother and tried to look for possible reasons why his boy behaves this way. I learned from our tete-a-tete that her son suffered from some kind of psychological problems while going through kindergarten especially because of the treatment he got from his previous teacher. He was traumatized by the experience until he refused to attend school so the mother brought his son to a kindergarten studio instead of attending school.
A gruesome experience happened when we were having our class and he started peeing on his pants. However, after knowing his circumstances, I tried to understand him so instead of scolding him, I tried talking to him to make him feel calm and even asked him to treat me as his sister to try to make him comfortable.
After this incident, we started playing together as a start like playing-hide and seek or painting together. I just wanted him to feel comfortable with me. Later, he started to smile at me and eventually, he came back to becoming a normal kid again.
This experienced changed my perception towards teaching and gave me confidence that I can be influential to children and have the power to teach and be compassionate to children.
Works Cited
Erikson, Kai (2011). Notes on the Sociology of Deviance. Web. https://www.soc.umn.edu/~uggen/Erikson_SP_63.pdf. 12 March 2014
