We Are All Teachers

Before coming to Okinawa, I always knew I wanted to be a teacher. I had this preconceived notion of what being a teacher entailed, what my role or duty as a teacher was to be. It was only until I had an unexpected yet surprisingly profound conversation with a stranger that I realized how little I knew about this “duty” of mine.

I was sitting alone in Starbucks waiting for my boyfriend to get off work. I was still a University student at this point and I was working on some homework, when a strange old man approached my table and sat down. Normally one would be quite alarmed by this but I wasn’t. His name was Bobby and he was kind of a celebrity at this Starbucks location. I didn’t know him well but I certainly knew of him and would see him from time to time. He was not your typical 70-year-old man for he was a little mentally unstable. He lived in the mental health care home that was close by. Every now and then he would come into Starbucks and chat up a storm with some of the baristas and customers. On his good days, he was all smiles and a delight to talk to; however, on his bad days he would sometimes mutter offensive slurs.

As he sat down across from me, he plopped his sketchbook that he often carried with him on the table. He asked me what I was doing and I told him I was doing some schoolwork. He then asked me straightforwardly, “What do you want to be in the future”. I quickly responded with, “a teacher”. He sat there nodding as if he was giving me some kind of approval. I went on to tell him, in the most cliché way possible, “I want to mold young minds”. This is where the conversation suddenly changed from being light-hearted to incredibly enlightening. After I told him this, with his eyes piercing through mine like knives, Bobby said to me very gravely “No, no, no….no, you don’t ever want to do that.” Of course, I humored him and asked him why not. It was the words he spoke next that changed my entire perspective on what it meant to be a teacher. He told me, “You don’t want to MOLD their minds… you should FREE their minds”.

I sat there trying to digest what he had just said to me, looking somewhat dumbfounded. Those simple words carried so much meaning. It almost made me feel quite foolish having said what I did. He then got up, smiled at me and glided out the door. This man that people never really took seriously just reconstructed my entire way of thinking. All this time, I thought it was my obligation to shape my students into what I felt was right. But as teachers we can only provide our students with the knowledge and information for them to chose what is right by themselves. Of course we provide some sort of guidance but in the end, it is the students themselves that must formulate their own opinions and choose what is best for them. This, I believe, is the role of a teacher.