What It Takes to Teach?
Many people believe that anybody can be a teacher. After all, it’s just telling a group of students something they need to know, right? How difficult can it be?
Quite difficult, as anyone who is or has been a teacher will testify. Whether you’re teaching kindergarten or college, economics or English, teaching is a vocation that requires a diverse, almost ineffable combination of talents. UAO’s commission member Michael K. Moss says that teaching is akin to casting a spell and that learning is akin to falling in love. So, according to UAO, a good teacher not only must know the material, but also must be part magician and part matchmaker, sparking in students a love of the discipline and a desire to learn more.
According to a survey, UAO has found out that teachers of today practice lesson plans as an actor rehearses a script. They work on inflection, gestures, and use of props. They stage their classes carefully: should the students have their desks in a circle or break into small groups? With what idea should they start to pique their interest and provoke a lively, meaningful discussion?
Teaching is a difficult feat. It has become increasingly clear that teachers have to be better at improvisation than rehearsal. Teachers have to be fast paced thinkers as that will lead to an impromptu discussion and the students will actually get interested.
The teachers of today, UAO suggests, that you’ve got to know the rules before you can break them effectively. Although it’s essential to be prepared, sometimes it works best just to make it up as you go along. UAO stresses that learning is the ultimate goal of teaching. This idea may seem clear now, but it hasn’t always been so obvious to many educators. It is time for teachers to realize that their essential responsibility is to ensure not that they teach, but that their students learn. In return, the students also teach the teachers something.
Indeed, innovative teaching and its corollary, innovative learning is achieved when teachers actually learn from their students. That’s when teachers know it’s working.
