One of the things that made me stay and fall in love with teaching is the feeling I get (a mixture of pride, wonder, appreciation and accomplishment) whenever I see my students appreciate a topic that I just taught them.

It’s a very uplifting and addicting feeling – one that I actually depended on for the past 5 years. But it’s not something that is easy to come by. You see, in order for the students to appreciate what I teach them, I usually go out and break the walls of the curriculum to bring the topics to a level that my students could easily relate to – books, computer games, cars, comics, etc. – basically anything and everything under the sun that could easily catch their fancy. Seems easy huh? Wrong! (At least for me it’s not!) The problem is I get my sense of awe or inspiration (the one I try to infect my students with) from the things I do outside teaching – like what I get after reading a book, or what I feel after watching an interesting episode of National Geographic or Discovery Channel program, or the satisfaction I get after winning a game (pc, card or any other type). Without this awe (a.k.a. sense of wonder, inspiration, dreamy sense of elation, etc.), it takes a lot of effort to make the students appreciate and effectively learn the lessons I teach them. This is why I make it a point to find that inspiration as often as I can.

Every once in a while I play the guitar, read some pocket books, watch TV, go out – anything I could do to break the monotony of school because usually, these are the times when inspiration would strike. Unfortunately, this year, I’m having a really difficult time doing that. With the intensive planning, the strict adherence to schedules and pre-defined boundaries, I’m finding it harder and harder to free myself from the routine and search for that illusive inspiration. Sometimes I wonder, is this the price to pay for becoming so darn organized? I know it shouldn’t be but that’s how I feel right now. I’ve never been this structured before in my life, but at the same time I’ve also never been this desensitized. I almost feel like an android, pre-programmed to complete a series of tasks on a daily basis. The excitement, the surprise, the awe and the inspiration are slowly fading. Have you ever felt like this before?

I remember hearing the same thing from andrea before when she was still working in an insurance company. “Everything feels like routine.” I’m guess this is what she meant by that. Even though teaching may not exactly be a mind-dulling routine (I promise you mind-dulling is probably the last thing that would happen to a teacher), it is slowly becoming a scheduled, closed and pre-determined cycle nonetheless. And no matter how hard I think of another word, routine is usually what comes to mind when I try to describe it.

I guess, to put it poetically, my soul and my brain are craving for freedom and starving for that very essence which makes teaching magical. In other words, I want to be able to teach with enchantment again, with awe, with zest and with a sense of wonder, but I can’t… at least not at the moment. This is why I’m desperately trying to finish a book, or watch a movie, or listen to the radio, relax, break free, or do absolutely anything that could help me find it again - that sense of wonder and inspiration. If I don’t, I’m scared to think of what’s going to happen…next year.