Journalled on Wednesday, 5th of July 2023 | Flamengo, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: 25 degrees, warm, sunny and slightly overcast.
It is already Wednesday; half the week has already passed, and that is a good sign.
Like anything else in life, if it is going slowly, there is something wrong. When it is fast, things are usually going the right way without too much stress. The classes are going well, and I enjoy teaching all the pupils.
This is quite normal for me; I rarely have a pupil I dislike or bad feelings about a person in question. In such a situation, I continue giving classes, trying to ignore how I feel about this person while remaining professional and correct.
Still, sometimes, if it is too toxic in some way and I am not able to stand it anymore, I make up some excuse and end the classes. During my twenty-plus years of teaching, I think I have voluntarily stopped teaching pupils on five or six occasions.
My market for giving classes is adults; however, many of my ex-pupils, who are married and have children, have approached me over the years to provide classes for their children. 99.9% of the time, it has been exceptionally good, and both the young pupils and I have had healthy and profitable classes.
For some strange reason, adolescents like to have classes with me, and, as I said before, I sincerely enjoy teaching them. I maintain objectivity, focus, and professionalism, and many people mention with affection the time they spent studying with me.
However, there was a recent case in which a mother, an ex-pupil of mine, and a friend reached out to me, asking me to teach her daughter.
I already knew her daughter, as she is about the same age as Yasmin, and when I was married to Nalva, I taught classes to other family members, including the mother.
I started giving my friend’s daughter online classes twice a week, now a young teenager in the middle of the pandemic. It all began well; the classes were going well, and we had built rapport in a short time. I had also incentivised this teenager in other areas of her life, as she was a teenager, thinking she knew everything and really knowing nothing, but more so, looking for her way.
After six months of teaching her, I did my best as she was my friend’s daughter, but I noticed the classes were less effective than before. I tried to ignore it and did my best to keep teaching without stopping or stressing myself.
On one occasion, the negativity was so great that I had to call her attention in the middle of the class to let her know that her parents were paying for the lessons and that they were good for her. Besides the obvious, she is extremely intelligent, and teaching someone intelligent is proactive and productive for both, but, more importantly, for her.
But she did not care; she carried an air of arrogance, as if she were doing me a favour, and this arrogance stemmed partly from her parents paying for the classes; she was superior, I was inferior, and she could do whatever she wanted.
This was too much for me. I had had enough and called her attention to her behaviour. As a teacher, I expressed my feelings calmly and frankly, which she had not expected. I did not raise my voice nor shout; I just told it how it was; she cried.
I did not mean for her to cry. I wanted to calmly show her the importance of the classes her parents were paying for, without drama, using a low, frank voice that usually breaks anyone down.
Her mother later called me to ask what had happened. I explained exactly what was happening in the classes and what I did, and offered to return the money she had paid for the next two months in advance. I also offered to stop the classes immediately.
She said no and that she wanted her daughter to continue.
In all that had happened, I was always polite, never raising my voice, only pragmatic and calm in justifying my reasons and indignation without hurting or offending anyone about what was happening in the classes.
I wanted to end the classes there and then and allow the child`s mother the option to stop them without losing face. Still, as she wanted her daughter to continue, I knew the classes would be suspended at the end of the year, for school holidays, etc., so I would have to hold myself and be patient until then. When the classes finally ended, it was a relief for me; it was one of the most toxic situations I have ever been in as a teacher.
The funny thing is that this young teenage ex-pupil has reached out to me twice now, wanting to return to the classes and saying she was missing me. Indeed, I do not dislike her; the truth is that I have nothing against her and perhaps quite like her, but the classes were very hard for me and highly toxic.
Having contact with, or doing something with, a person you do not like or have a negative feeling about, is very hard to live with regularly and over a long period. It is better to face the problem or move on than to let it erode you from the inside and eventually affect your self-esteem.
As I have already said, these cases as a teacher are few and far between, but when they appear, they must be faced and dealt with.
Yasmin and I went to the local baker’s in the evening to have a drink, buy bread, and talk a little. We have been talking a lot recently, which is good for both of us!
Be kind and be happy, and if you can’t be happy, still be kind, but not naïve!
In bed by 10 p.m.
Thank you.
Thanks for reading my blog. Check out my other posts and share your thoughts in the comments.
Richard
