I love teaching, but I only realized it a little over a year ago. Education is for everyone and may be achieved in a variety of ways. But for teachers, education means school and academics. Not everyone enjoys or is good at school, so teachers need to make education accessible to individuals. It is a challenging but rewarding task. To me teaching is opening doors for children. They get to choose which doors to walk through based on their interests and abilities. I'm so excited to have a classroom where I can guide children to reach their highest potential. Yet, education is not only helping children realize their dreams. It is also about teaching them practical lessons in subjects such as math, science, English, etc. Theses day to day lessons give students the knowledge to be well rounded individuals, and it is during this time that teachers and students build the relationships necessary to open doors together.
Teachers need to be in constant evaluation of their methods. Education should not and cannot be the same decade after decade or even year after year. We need to ask ourselves "why?" about everything we do in the classroom. Teachers are also students. If we do not continue to learn, our methods will become stale and ineffective. Education is the process of life long learning. Teaching is the process of developing life long learners. By opening doors of knowledge for children, we give them opportunities to go through them even later in life. Hopefully, they will take advantage of this and be people who want to learn more and more throughout their lifetime.
I very much agree that we as teachers are constantly changing our methods. I may be teaching on the same lesson, but I don’t do it in the same way for every class because all of their needs are different; no one learns the same, no one processes ideas the same. If we were to expect them to all be the same, we would not be doing our jobs and therefore would be doing the children we encounter a great disservice. I am a firm believer that we learn as much from our students as they learn from us. Every student we encounter adds something to our knowledge bank whether it be about a different life style, a different culture, some happening that interests them, a different learning style etc. We learn from them too.
ReplyDeleteI like how simply you put that "Teachers are also students." Perhaps that's what gets forgotten that as teachers we need to constantly remind ourselves. I had a situation recently while volunteering at my daughter's school where another parent made a suggestion and the response we got was "Well that's how I've been doing it for 20 years" with her implication being not to change something that's working. But the whole point of the suggestion is that we didn't think it was working, not well at least. This was a great learning opportunity for this teacher to hear another's input and re-evaluate how she does things.
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ReplyDeletePosted on wrong blog- Good food for thought. Adapting is key, but some tried and true methods must not be lost. When JFK was assassinated I was in 3rd grade and 7 years old. I was crushed. Almost every teacher stopped class and just let the children ask questions and vent. My teacher stated that the world is still going on, get out your Math books. I have never forgotten that moment- will never make that error. My parents pulled me out of public school the next day.
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