“Having a connection with students is a key ingredient for me, as I’ve noticed they tend to be more motivated to study your subject. If you have a teacher that you don’t like, you will rarely open the books they teach, right? I believe, us, teachers, have a big responsibility in how a student feels towards a certain subject.

Being in this industry for so long, there are definitely many ups and downs in our line of work. One of them is that our pay isn’t very high. I always tell my students, if you want to become a lecturer, you really need to like the job or else you will be quite stressed. Your other coursemates would be earning maybe five figures but it would be very hard for you to achieve that unless you get a PhD. There is an upside though, in the teaching line, you will have more free time. In other fields, you may have a lot of money, but no time to spend it. So it depends on what kind of life you want. For me, teaching is good. I love that I have more time with my family.

So far, teaching has been a really good career because it is very fulfilling seeing your students’ academic performance. For me, It’s not only about students getting an A but if I can help a student who is failing, pass the subject, it’s a very satisfying feeling. That is something that cannot be measured by money.

One thing I’ve always believed in is life-long learning and I hope I inspire my students to believe in that as well. Even for me, even though I am familiar with the chemistry syllabus in SAES, if I were asked to teach an A-levels chemistry subject, I wouldn’t be that good at it. I’ll need some time to learn and prepare myself.

I think every day we have something new to learn, just like I also learn from all of my students. Even though they’re just students, they’re already involved in so many things – I have students running their own online shops, sometimes even multiple shops and I recently learned of the concept ‘gap year’ where students use their time to gain worldly skills. In the past, I would have never heard of such a thing!

I always learn something new from my students.”

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Humans of KL is working with academics from Taylor’s College to share stories which embody their values; Hope, Grit and Slay.

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