My beloved teacherby 주아나

My beloved teacher~

It’s been a while since I last wrote to you.

How are you?

Since it’s Teacher’s Day, I’ve been thinking more about you.

I know I shouldn’t think of you only on special days…. hehe... ^^

It feels like it was just yesterday that I studied the things you taught me, but already, this much time has passed.

The reason why I like you, Teacher, is because you are so good at teaching.

To be honest, many teachers just go through their lessons without even understanding their students or explaining certain things.

But you, Teacher, explain even the difficult lessons in such an easy way.

Thanks to you, someone like me, who hated everything to do with studying, was able to study until the end.

There were so many people around me that gave up on studying.

However, I was able to follow until the end because you persistently explained until I understood.

I think the reason I didn’t give up was because you didn’t give up on us.

Teacher~ I know that some students complained saying, “Why do we have to study the same thing over and over again?”

Honestly, I thought that way too.

However, while I was spending time with my troublesome younger brother, I realized something.

It is so difficult to repeat the same thing over and over.

I realized because I got so impulsive and angry whenever he didn’t understand what I was saying.

I don’t know how many times I hit his back….

Well, you know, I’m not in any position to hit someone else…  

You taught us the answer tens and hundreds of times, so ideally we should have known it perfectly. However, although you repeated yourself countless times, whenever we faced a problem we couldn’t find the answer to, we always got mad saying, “Why didn’t you tell us the answer?” Despite this, you didn’t scold us, but instead you thought deeply about whether or not it was your explanation that was lacking. We didn’t actually recognize what we did wrong, so we simply thought, “Oh, I wonder why we’re only learning the same thing as before?”

Teacher, you are too kind.

If I were you, I would have just yelled, “It’s like I’m talking to a deaf person. I’m not going to teach you anymore!!”

But you always showed us how to do it first.

Other teachers are only good at speaking and they don’t really show us how to do things much.

You always showed a heart of thanksgiving even when you were studying all day long.

Since you were thankful for even the smallest of things before us children and adults, we couldn’t help but follow your example. You would always go to the sports field and stretch first when you told us to exercise.

I also saw how you exercised even during breaks.

So you know, even our class started to exercise a lot... though, it didn’t last for long…. ^^

But even now you are exercising. My friends can’t help but be impressed.

Teacher~ you are such a good person; I really want to get closer to you, but I am too timid. I am not good at expressing myself.

I wonder if you even knew that we were in the same class, because I hide myself.

I thought that you were only close to the people that were special or good at talking.

I envied the people that were close to you, and I thought, “How can they joke with the teacher like that?

Wow… I want to be friends with the teacher like that too~”

To be friends with a teacher…. I think it’s a dream all students have.

I know that you don’t specifically like only certain people.

I think it’s just because I didn’t actively participate more.

However, when I think about that time, you were still helping me a lot.

You know that my dream is to be a writer, right?

At last year’s commencement I wrote in my letter of introduction that my dream is to be a writer, but I didn’t really expect that I would be writing anything.

I didn’t know what kind of things to write about.

But you gave me many opportunities.

You told me to write scripts for the class acts and also to write academic news articles.

You also asked me to write the comments I would say as a presider for class events and you put me in a cultural club. I was scolded for incorrect grammar and was told to rewrite everything from the beginning. There were even times when I simply wrote too much because I didn’t know the key point.

I wondered… ”Why does he make me do so much? Should I really be doing all of this?” and therefore I struggled a lot.

However, I think through the struggles involved in that process, I was able to discover my individual writing style.

Of course, even now, there are times when my writing still goes astray, hehe.

When I reflected back on all of this, I came to believe that even though I personally didn’t feel close to you, you secretly helped me a lot. As you are reading this letter, you may think that I was close to you, but I wasn’t.

I can’t believe it! I’m sorry.

Teacher,

To commemorate this year’s Teacher’s Day, thinking about you, I wrote some things down.

My teacher who taught me to study about how to live my life, which was created by God, with His heart.

There is no graduating from the study of life, right?

Every day, I am so happy because I have met you.

I will work hard even as I study. I will focus during class time. ^^

Teacher~ thank you.

- your disciple