Today’s Treasured Teachers

To be better teachers, it becomes imperative to align what goes on in our minds with what goes on in the minds of our pupils/students on the one hand, and to project the appropriate image of an expert on the other. But how can we begin to do these if we don’t even know who we are?

We are teachers. We teach so people can learn. However, learning is a complex process. A teacher cannot analyze everything that goes through the mind and body of the learner while she teaches one lesson. Yet we must try to pass the message across either despite what goes through their minds or using what goes through their minds. As such, the role a teacher plays in school are varied and webbed.

ü  The teacher should become less of a provider of information and more of a facilitator of the learning process.

ü  The teacher should assess students after assessing the curriculum.

ü  The teacher should be resourceful and be a developer of resources.

ü  The teacher should become more of a planner and a better role model.

This is how we become treasured teachers. When parents come in, they want to talk to you. When management is troubled, you’re the go-to guy. When students have real issues, they seek you out. When you’re buried in work helping one kid, the other one is very jealous. You become truly indispensable. These happen because, you’ve built into the fabric of your personality that special something which stands you apart way ahead of the lessons you teach.

We transform into treasured teachers because we understand how learning takes place. We understand who our students are as individuals. Their style and strategy for taking in new information, retaining it and using it in other settings is borne in our minds way ahead of the lesson delivery itself. Our lessons are planned with these styles in mind, otherwise learning becomes difficult, if at all possible.

           But as the teacher adjusts the delivery of his content to suit learners, subtle nuances come to play. These must be brought under the control of the teacher so that what is not intended does not become a clog in the learning wheel for that day, or even the entire academic year. Therefore, apart from what is done, how it is done is of some importance to the learner. Think of this as the packaging of the product.