They Told Me I Was "Too Soft" to Teach

I’ve been called too soft more times than I can count.

Maybe I am. Or maybe I’m not.

There are days when I go home thinking I should have been more understanding. There are also days when I wonder if I was too harsh or if I did something completely inconsiderate of others.  Teaching has a way of complicating the math. People don't fit into neat equations; you carry conversations long after they end.

A former student of mine once described me to others: “Mabait yan si Ma’am pero mahigpit.” (Ma’am is kind, but she’s strict). When I first heard it, I wasn’t sure if those two words belonged together. Growing up, I thought kindness meant making people comfortable, avoiding conflict and always giving another chance. Then, life placed me in classrooms, I’ve realized people often mistake kindness for permissiveness.They assume that listening to understand means you don't have boundaries, and that speaking softly means believing softly, too.

But classrooms teach you the hard truth. Some days, kindness looked like listening patiently and repeating the same line over and over again. Other days, it looked like writing an incident report, calling a parent, and saying firm "no". Holding a student accountable even when they would probably hate me for it.

No one tells you that those things can exist in the same person. That you can care deeply for someone and still refuse to tolerate what is wrong. I remember when other teachers and students would say "masyado akong mabait" (I'm too nice). But my students know the real math of my classroom: the moment my values, morality, or authority are stepped on, the boundaries harden. I become strict. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing.

I once had a student with failing grades (other teachers might have thought I was being too easy on her)... I gave her all the help I could, but I still had to fail her. But when the deadline passed, the numbers didn't lie. I still had to fail her. Sitting at my desk, entering that grade felt like a burden, but bypassing it would have been a betrayal of her true potential. Years later, she still runs up to greet me with a genuine smile. She proved to me that my softness didn't make me weak, and it didn't compromise my standards. She saw the heart behind the hard line.

Maybe that’s why INFPs are being underestimated. Not because they lack strength but because our strength doesn’t announce itself.

Mine never did.

It shows up in small decisions: the conversations I don’t avoid, the values I refuse to bend and the students I continue believing in, even after they’ve stopped believing in themselves. I still overthink, I still wonder if I said enough or too much but I don’t think that part of me will ever change. I stick to my values even when it’s hard, and being an empath is my conviction.  

And maybe that’s okay.

I teach Mathematics and I write poetry. One asks me to solve; the other asks me to understand. Somewhere between formulas and metaphors, I learned that people are never as simple as either.

Looking back, I think my student described me better than I ever could. "Ma'am is kind, but she's strict."

Maybe those two words were never opposites after all.