Here in the school where I teach,we have logbooks for students to sign on before entering the class. It serves as their attendance as well as a record of utilization of the labs.
That also causes a lot of anger in me each time a student says: “Teacher, do you have a pen?”
Imagine that, a student entering a classroom without a pen and having the audacity to ask his teacher for one. Today I got reminded of this quote:
When the student is ready, the teacher appears.
Looking deeper into this, it became even clearer to me. When a student is not ready, what appears is not a teacher but it could be one, or maybe all of these:
- an enemy
- a broken record
- a slave master
- a megaphone
- a clown
- a war freak.
- .. feel free to add to the list.
I looked it up in the Internet and according to Google, the origin of the saying is from Tao Te Ching. And the complete quote goes like this:
When the student is ready, the teacher appears. When the student is truly ready, the teacher disappears.
Tao Te Ching
That second sentence made it even better. Yeah, the purpose of a teacher is to make the students learn how to live life without the teacher. As I always tell my students: In my class, I won’t give you a crutch. I will give you a torch so you can find your way thru life.
To end this, if you come across your student from the past and he/she didn’t recognize you, celebrate. You are able to get your student truly ready. That is why you disappeared.