It was for a talk but I thought I’ll share it with all of you anyway.
I was sitting on my chair, trying to think of a topic to write for this first blog and I ended up with this one. I was invited for a talk at Philippine Normal University by my professor in the course Reflective Pedagogy in English Language Teaching and we were given a set of questions to answer. There was this one question that we were all tasked to answer. It goes:
“What do you tell students like you who are just beginning to learn how to teach? What should they keep in mind?”
From there it cliqued in my mind; Teachers are still students because they still continue to learn even though they are practically considered ‘experts’ in the courses that they handle. With that said, what separates a good teacher from a great one is they are also students despite them already being a practicing one.
All the great teachers that I have had the pleasure of learning from they have one trait in common. They are LEARNERS.
Two former advisers of mine back in high school were ‘rookies’ per se in the professional world of teaching. I was in first year (or the 7th grade under the K-12 Curriculum) when I became their student. They were… hot-headed and too idealistic so to speak at first. Some of the most memorable moments I have with them are retained for the wrong reasons.
The activities were engaging, the discussions were meaningful and I can go on and on and on about the positives on how they taught in the classroom but to explain it best, let us compare it to one of Einstein’s most memorable quotes:
“If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it’s stupid.”
They tapped into the potential and talents that were present in their students and integrated their content that allows the learners to grow using the tools that they have but also challenge them enough that they grow into much stronger individuals that can handle the fast-pace pressure tests in the fields that they will be entering in. Going back to the quote of Einstein, those teachings that they have imparted are still retained to this day and as a future educator myself, I can also apply the same principles to my future students. These teachers learned which student is a fish, which student is a bird and which student is a bull and such and they taught them how to swim, how to fly and how to run. Fear not the man who has practiced a 1000 moves but rather fear the man who has practiced one move 1000 times.
Moving on, these teachers continued to teach our batch when we got to the higher levels and I have observed something that made them great. They learned how to handle the various colorful personalities that are always present in the classroom and they used that to create lesson logs, activities and instructions that sharpens the strengths of the learners as well as inculcate intangibles that develop excellence in whatever field they may find themselves in.
Man am I glad to be their student. I am able to learn because they also learned the best possible ways to teach students like us how to learn. The question posed is this; Are teachers still students? They always are and always will be.
Learn something today people; what do you want to happen today?
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