' What do you call a person who keeps on talking, when people are no longer interested ?, 'A Teacher'.
This is what I stumbled upon, on one of the social media sites with more than 2K likes, one of them being by my ex student,. Certainly it left me thinking at the way, we as teachers have raised our students. Didn't we wanted children to respect us the same way, we respected our teachers? Didn't we wanted our students to look upto us and remember us for our teachings ? Then what happened wrong? Where did we miss a note?
As we went on to pursue our degree in Education, we realised taking attendance, keeping records, following a structured curriculum and assessment in even more structured way is what we will have to do at schools.Many of us who took teaching in schools, at some point were told, teaching is all about managing the classrooms, managing the students, the curriculum and above all the results.
Have we ever thought, of not wanting to go into the classroom for delivering a lecture but igniting an imagination, not just regulating and disciplining students but giving them air to mould themselves and have a self control, not act as sole harbingers of knowledge but be their guide in quest of knowledge?
Well, considering the traditional linear method of teaching, we wouldn't had to worry about our future.
Till date, I had always said to my husband, ' We teachers needn't worry about recession.' Only until now, where we may not worry about recession but being redundant.
The old chalk and talk learning can now be taken up by any individual who's confident to stand up in front of faces glaring at you Googl(e)ing aimlessly. The textbooks, structured curricula and teachers to disseminate it are a thing of mechanistic past. The sooner we embrace the fact that we are living in networked leaning era, the quicker we will understand how the role of teacher has to change along with it.
The big challenge for teachers that lies ahead is not how much do we want our learners to know, but how do we want them to know what is needed and what is not and how much are we willing to grow with them in this process.as future teachers , we need to cater to broader curriculum with constant upgradation to new learning and skills. We need to learn when required, unlearn when posing a hindrance and relearn to upgrade.
Post Google age, the role of teacher is becoming far more than important. Only the way it comes across is different now.
Don't forget to engage your learners in the teaching with end of concept, tweet reflections.That's something that will keep your learners hooked. And you never know, someday again I might come across some interesting quotes on Teachers ;-))
