I ended up being a teacher because there was nothing for me to do except becoming one. Some people, when jobless, wallow in self-pity. Others however become imaginative and they explore other untried fields. In the process they reinvent themselves. I experienced both.
I often regarded teaching as unexciting at the same time taxing: unexciting because of the confines of the four-walled classroom the teacher has to endure in her entire professional life; taxing because of the sleepless nights the teacher has to spend on reading and studying lessons. Why study when I already did this as a student? Why limit myself inside the classroom if I can work outside of it?
When a wife stops contributing some amount to the family's budget, she starts doubting her significance as a person. When a wife earns no income, she begins restricting herself from activities she used to do and from things she used to have. The income from being a teacher became my greatest motivation when I applied for the job - the worthlessness I felt as a wife inspired me to do something.
Soon I became a teacher and I got an income.
If there was a change in my lifestyle, there was not much. The change was more on my activities as a person. As a jobless wife, I spent my nights watching television; as a teacher, I spend them on reading and studying lessons. In terms of physical location, there was still this confinement in space. I was previously confined to the four walls of the house; now that I am a teacher, to the four walls of the classroom.
I am teaching full-time, i.e., eight hours a day, but why am I called a part-time teacher? The word part-time refers to my employment status. Part-time because I am paid based on the number of hours I teach; part-time because I do not have the benefits the regular teachers receive from the government as teachers.
There had been discussions among part-time teachers about the unfairness and the unreasonableness of the situation. I genuinely understand them because I was once like them - dissatisfied: they, with their salaries; I, with the absence of it. When one is unhappy, he/she has to do something so that things can change for the better.
For four semesters, I have experienced how part-time teachers are treated unfairly by some university staff: from letting us, part-time teachers, work as (unpaid, unappreciated) volunteer production assistants cum snack servers to student performers during school programs to releasing our salaries only after the regular employees get theirs.
In this school wherein the employee's salary grade is the gauge of a person's worthiness, a part-time teacher cannot help but feel like a second-class citizen.
For four semesters, I witnessed the despair among part-time teachers. Still these have become the happiest four semesters in my entire life. It is not only about my contribution to the family's income but more importantly it is about the sense of self I attained as a teacher - part-time or regular or permanent, it does not matter.
Next to the intimacy of the four-walled bedroom, I learned to enjoy the vibrancy of the four-walled classroom. The more I studied, the more I recognized my ignorance. The more I read, the more I realized that teaching does not confine the teachers to the classroom. Instead, it liberates them from being dull and uninteresting; it opens for them another realm beyond those four walls; it offers them a sense of longevity in this impermanent world.
