Second of May

Second of May, education day. Yesterday as I had such preliminary sessions in my application to a private school in Kotabaru, Jambi, I found one memorable question I had to answer in my form saying “What’s your main intention in being an educator?”

That question keeps hitting me up to this moment since this is the very relevant day of time to talk and contemplate a lot about my personal passion on ed. I feel a very huge gratitude as I had my college study on education, specifically English education, so I can have such an opportunities to gain more understanding of ed in this country. I chose the study program merely because the background on education and teaching would give me such a good prospect for a job in the future, I guessed. Being a good teacher once also was my obsession, but my experience in teaching a senior high school for several months in 2010 changed everything.

I then knew there’s a huge problem happening in our ed, mainly about the teachers. Some of the people out there call teacher as a struggler since they have to work a lot for such a lack of welfare, in many cases. Many times I feel regretful in my study choice as I find many of ex-classmates have such a very prospective job and life though they do not have a degree I have recently. I also find out that engineering and science studies will give people a higher jump for their career. However, I still believe that this is my own path.

Referring back to the question in the beginning of this writing, I should admit it that I cannot still figure out how to separate the definition of a teacher and that of an educator. But this is something really clear that I want to be an educator, not merely a teacher. I guess my opinion on the definition of a teacher here is still influenced by the facts I found out there about their lacking welfare. So in essence I reckon that they are the same. I don’t know who finds the term ‘teachers’ for our educators. But how can you be a teacher when you don’t educate? This will be difficult to determine.

Well, I can also say that to teach is to make people know while to educate means to make people understand, speculatively.

This is my answer for that question, if I’m not mistaken: I want to make better human beings and individuals. I want to make people gain their understanding of life and their existence, and their optimism in dealing with everyday problems.

8.14 am.