I am a teacher

 I think if I could do things over as a career, I’d be a teacher. Being a teacher comes with a lot of responsibility and good teachers understand that. I look at myself as a teacher that practises empathy and can bring out the best in people. I really enjoy teaching and I find that when I’m in that role I learn more than I think the person I’m teaching is learning. Perhaps we’re getting the same amount but in different ways? I recently joined the level one class in which I hadn’t attended in over a year. I was back in a place I forgot how much I enjoyed. I really liked watching all the students learn and adapt to what they were being taught. I could see the raw talent but also how they looked at their kung fu in ways I’d forgotten.  Then came the opportunity to teach. I wasn’t the sifu leading the class but yet I felt that I could help and contribute to some of the students. It was such a great feeling to help them with that technique and then watch them grow from my little bit of help for the rest of the class.

There was one time in my life that I want to share that’s changed my life forever. It’s when I moved to Winnipeg and was a partner in a business there. I arrived to a very broken and dysfunctional group of people. I must say that these were some of what people told me were “the worst of the worst” in the industry and to be honest a lot of them were, expect for Joey. Joey was a young man with a young family trying to do his best to support them. He wasn’t happy in the current role and when I asked him what he wanted to do he said he always enjoyed selling but no one gave him the opportunity. You see everyone in that shop didn’t think much of him and bullied him at times. I decided on the spot that I was going to take him out the next day and teach him how to sell. He was rough around the edges but he had some key personality characteristics that I liked. He was sincere and genuine and understood how to look after people the right way. My job was to teach him the other aspects of selling but it was worth it as I knew he’d succeed. And sure enough he became the best salesman on my team, but what happened next shook me to the core. One Saturday his wife and kids came to pick him up at the end of his shift. His wife came over to talk to me and thanked me for believing in Joey and giving him an opportunity to do sales. Then she said “It changed his/our lives”.

This is the most powerful and humbling things all at the same time. Being a teacher is so important to me as a kung fu martial artist but it’s also just as powerful in my life outside the kwoon. Thank you, Joey.

Mr. Repay