History and Philosophy

I am fully occupied by my teaching job lately. I am somehow exhausted by it though as well as enjoying it at the same time. My students are all very very lovely and cute. I have to yelling to them sometimes in order to keep a decent class circumstance. Also, I have to force them to study that becomes a new mission in my life. Before this teaching job, I believed that everybody took their responsibility of their actions, and the other person has no any duty to force anybody to do anything. Anyone could do whatever they wanted, and then they took the full consequence. However, being a teacher now, there is not this case at all.

There is a troublemaker boy in my class. He rarely studies but talking, running, and playing in the class. I have never given his smiling face, but always scold him. The purpose of doing this is to force him studying rather than staying idly. One day after the class, I again warned him if he didn’t study in the class, I would not welcome to my class any more. At that moment, his tutor was coming. She said she could represent this boy’s parent, and asked me to explain what happened on this boy. Observing this tutor’s expression, I believed she was not happy about the scene she was seeing. She said nobody dare scold this boy in the home. If one criticizes him in anything, his resistance would become stronger. I sensed her disapproval of my method of education on this boy.

I rejected her point immediately. I said I have spent a lot of time on him in the class. In my opinion, when a child is at home, his parents take the responsibility of his education; when he is in school, the teacher take this responsibility. If he was in my class and I ignored him and allowed him to do anything he wants, I failed my duty. I would never do such a thing. In addition, I told her, if the parents wished I do nothing on this boy, I could do that, but obviously, this boy would learn nothing in the class. Of course, the tutor dare not take this severe result, and she said nothing. However, when I thought again about my words later, I felt they were probably too strict and strong to be accepted even though the point was unquestionable. The next day, this boy absented. My worry was increasing. If he no longer came this school anymore, how can I explain this to the school principle? Fortunately, the boy came back the third day; everything is ok now.

I finally got Zachary’s Chinese name. It is Shi Zhe, following by Chinese order that the family name goes first and then the given name. In Chinese, shi means history, and zhe means philosophy. I immediately like this name for its awesome meaning. So, next time when I meet Zachary, I can avoid the embarrassing of mispronouncing his English name, but simply call his Zhe. It makes my life easier.