The biggest secret of all

I just came back from teaching IELTS skills to my fellow colleagues - lecturers who are about to further their studies abroad and need to sit for this internationally-acknowledged English Test where they need to achieve a certain band to proceed with their application.

And God, I feel good.

I get stints like this once in a while apart from what I teach everyday - which is Technical English, and think to myself- this is what I wanna do, this is where I belong - teach proficiency to appreciating adults. I'm reminded again of what brought me here in the first place - my love for teaching proficiency English.

What I do now is teach Technical English to engineering and IT undergrads, who half-dragged themselves to class, looking like something the cat brought in, wishing that the skies would fall down that day so that class would be cancelled.

Today I drove home feeling FULL. I feel satisfied, accomplished and just happy. It doesn't help that my absolute current fav song was on air too ~ Next Plane Home - Daniel Powter (best gilerr kan lagu ni??) which I loudly sang and danced along with.

I love the wide-eyed innocence of students, be they 20 or 45, and the look on their faces when they understand and recognise something. The grin and nods make you feel like you've shared with them the biggest secret of all! It's just priceless.

And when the teaching profession get slammed, hit and clobbered left, right and corner, this twinkle-in-the-eye is what gets you through the day. When the day sucks and all you have is the smallest will to live, this is the the thing that picks you up and pushes you to move on. When we have nothing else to hold on to, this hope is what we have.

And noone but us teachers will know how that feels.

And that, ladies & gentlemen, is the biggest secret of all! Hah! So who has the last laugh now?