Statements Comments Questions
Enok: What is important when you try to be a good teacher? Archie: A person’s quality of teaching is in my opinion a function of their awareness and their enthusiasm. The greater the teacher’s enthusiasm (passion) for their subject or subjects and the greater the teacher’s awareness of the students’ enthusiasms or interests the greater the possibility of real meaningful learning in the classroom. If the enthusiasm of the teacher and the student correspond something akin to magic happens. To value and understand the interests of the students is important. To share in those enthusiasms and then convey to the students a sense of the teacher’s interests is important.
E: Should the teacher share in!? How can it happen?
A: For these things to happen a teacher needs to be aware of what fuels him or her and what fuels the students. Self-knowledge and knowledge of others are the foundation of good teaching. Observing, listening, asking questions and answering honestly are seemingly tasks. However, being a non-judgemental and sympathetic observer and listener is difficult.
E: How do you guide and advise student teachers?
A: My questions to student teachers (and to myself) are: What is important to you and what is important to each of the students in this class? What brings joy to you and what brings joys to them? For it is those things that bring joy and are valued by the individual that are gateways to profound and lasting learning in my opinion.
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What do you think of Archie's statements? Would you like to ask him some questions? Forward your comments and questions to enok@kippersund.no and Hugen will present your contribution to Archie, and the rest of us, to go on with the meditation on these things.
When I myself will meet Archie next time, I will tell him I find his statement very positive, but also a bit provoking: Should I think that "the interests of the students" always will be of interest? Really?
Hello Enok,
I hope you had a good summer. Mine was awesome!!!
As someone who has been in the teaching profession for some years, I
have this to say in response to your dialogue on teaching:
It seems to me that not only should we try to meet our students half way
when it is pedagogically sound to do so, but we should also endeavor to
make them expand their horizons, ask new questions, whet their appetite
for more knowledge, develop new tastes and areas of interest etc. So,
if I'm teaching English language, I bend over backwards to choose
passages and topics that make the language acquisition process a more
enticing and enjoyable one for them. But, if someone tells me she
doesn't like literature courses period, then it is my duty (or
calling!!) to try and make her see this field through new eyes. As you
know, we teachers have a monumental influence on our students, who, to
varying degrees, look up to us and use us as guides. This makes our
responsibility all the greater: when a student comes to me and says that
the enthusiasm I radiate in the classroom has rubbed off on her and made
her change her negative preconceptions/misconceptions about something, I
am as pleased as overwhelmed by her statement. We really have to love
what we do and to care enough about the students to want to make them
share our passions. Sometimes I tell myself I'm cloning myself in my
students: several former students have gone ahead and done graduate work
in areas I originally made them curious about or interested in. I tell
myself it's unfair of me to want to reproduce myself in others and that
I should be careful about trying to impart my value system to them. I
want them to be themselves, whatever that means!, but as an educator,
you can't help but *be yourself in the classroom*, and part of being
yourself is presenting yourself as you genuinely conceive of yourself,
with the least number of masks possible. I can't but teach from the
guts, pouring my heart and soul into what I say and do. I endeavour to
teach only the texts that have been empowering for me and can have a
like effect on my students, but this isn't always possible, of course.
I like to open their eyes to the relativity of beliefs and values and
instil in them a questioning mind, a mind that is self-reflexive,
self-questioning, introspective. I don't see my mission as someone
imparting a set of skills or knowledge about a canon, but as someone who
is there to make of them thinking beings with developed thinking skills
so that "they may have Life and have it more abundantly" as Tennyson
would put it .
OK, enough!! But your question did provoke a response. Your thoughts?
Sincere regards,
Salwa
Enok,
You asked:
Should I think that "the interests of the students" always will be of
interest? Really?
Yes, I think so. Being interested in another person is the door to their
soul, their brain, their way of perceiving life. Every interest someone has
can lead to other topics, but you need common round to teach and to learn.
Being interested in someone else's interests creates that common ground. A
person will be prepared to learn if he feels that you think he's relevant to
you, if he feels that his thoughts are acknowledged as being of worth - know
what I mean?
I was talking to a kid last week, and all he's interested in is
"Pokemon" -
we talked about that for hours, he tried to teach me the game and in doing
so, he learnt a lot - it was fun. And afterwards we both felt teacher and
pupil.
A quote I kinda like about teaching:
"You cannot teach without learning, unless you're a corpse in an anatomy
class."
Greetings,
renata
My father, John M. Stephens, started his teaching career in a
one-room
schoolhouse in Northern Canada and ended it being a professor of
Educational Psychology at Johns Hopkins University and writing a
successful textbook. He early got the idea that the teacher was the
significant factor in the education process - that facilities and
materials had little to do with it. He tested his theory
experimentally and found it to hold up. Students' scores did not
correlate with their facilities and materials, but did correlate with
their teachers' abilities.
He loved to say that there were three qualities that made a good
teacher: first, that the teacher himself loved his subject. Second,
that he loved to TALK about his subject. Third, that he was the kind
of person who just got real uneasy when someone made a mistake - he
just kind of HAD to correct the person.
Doreen McElroy
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