How Can I Really Say That I Am Truly An Effective Teacher?

"Did I really succeed as a teacher?"

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    For the past four years, I have dedicated a big part of my life to teaching. I have always seen teaching as my calling. It has given me so much fulfillment and purpose. Yet, now that circumstances have taken me away from it, at least temporarily, it has given me a chance to look back and reflect on how I was as a teacher. And I simply ask myself one simple question: How can I really say that I am truly an effective teacher?

     As a teacher, I have always tried to go beyond just providing instruction. For me, it is all about how you teach. Did my students really learn something from me? Or was I such an epic fail that I just wasted their time? 

    How can I say that I did succeed as a teacher? Is it a matter of seeing my students do well in academics? Or is it a matter of having given them more than enough memorable experiences that they will forever remember? Or is it more of inspiring them to be the best that they can be? Or probably, is it more of making them look beyond the instruction per se and see the bigger picture? I honestly, in all sincerity, do not know. I guess I have come to a point where I have realized that I can never please and accomodate all my students in the most optimum way possible. There will always be a case where there will be a mismatch between how I am as a teacher and how my students are as students. So, does this mean that whatever I do and however way I prepare myself as a teacher, I will always be bound to fail in one way or another? Will I forever be compelled to be ineffective? Obviously, these are the very questions why I believe that there can never be exact indications to determine how truly effective one is as a teacher. In fact, I would rather look at a teacher's effectiveness as a product of the overall experience and how he/she truly impacted the lives of his/her students. And based on experience, the only people who can truly validate a teacher's effectiveness is through his/ her students.

So, going back to my main questions, did I really succeed as a teacher? Was I really effective? I actually do not know. All I can do is to hope and pray that I actually did.

Teaching is a calling. It is the purest form of generosity and the sincerest expression of compassion and love. A great teacher will never become rich in terms of money but he/she will forever be rich in terms of inspiring people and giving them the things that money can't buy. And these very things make the whole process truly worthwhile.