What Teaching Is

I loved the beginning quote by Dr. James E. Alatis (Dean Emeritus, School of Languages and Linguistics, Georgetown University).of the article presented to us this week (see reference at the end of post):

“Good teaching happens when competent teachers with non-discouraging personalities use non-defensive approaches to language teaching and learning, and cherish their students”. 

 It was encouraging to find in the quote the four basic concepts upon which I have founded my professional practice:

• Competence, which for me it means being effective, but moreover committing to constant professional actualization.

•  No being easily discouraged, because when faced with the complexity of the world, there are many moments in which a teacher might ask the universe: what is the point of this all? What difference can I really make?

• Being Non-defensive, because one of the biggest obstacles for smooth learning processes that can be found is people’s egos. Teachers are in a position of some sort of authority, and that can be at times confusing, if the person is not very centered.

• Cherishing is what brings joy to the profession. The love you feel is often times the only real reward for your efforts, but it is so self-satisfying, that anything else is the cream on the cake. It makes your free, because teaching is not what you get paid to do, but what your life is about.

 I have always thought that good teaching is good learning. That’s why teaching and learning are part of a loop that spirals upwards, propelled by the accomplishments of one that go into the other, only to start again.

In practical terms, and applied to our profession, what this means is that, according to my experience, a good teacher is one that has a fast and life-long learning curve.

It is a teacher that is quickly capable of assessing the students’ individual personalities and learning styles, as well as their collective identity (yes, students at times behave as a single organic unit).  The sooner the teacher can create a conceptual map of the students, the sooner that he or she is going to find the best possible paths to optimize their learning skills, capture their interest, and have an idea of how much to pull, push, or when to stop.

I agree, therefore, with another statement made in the article which says: The classroom becomes a kind of laboratory where the teacher can relate teaching theory to teaching practice.”

Many books, such as Donald P. Kauchak and Paul D. Eggen’s Learning and Teaching: research-Based Methods[1], emphasize the importance of moving away from teacher centered methodologies, and moving towards learner centered ones. In principle I agree with this advice, but I think the environment in which you are teaching, has a big impact on the degree that you can move along the path of putting the learning process increasingly in the students’ hands. For instance:

•  Learner-centered approaches make perfect sense in an ideal environment:

                                     - Students are used to having the language around (ESL 

-Students are learning because they have interiorized the advantages of being able to communicate effectively in this language, and are eager to learn it.

-Students are of a certain age and maturity which allows them to have a workable level of self-regulation when managing their learning process.

• But, it needs to be adapted in EFL environments, and/or when working with more immature and reluctant learners’ contexts (some high-school and elementary school students of rural areas of our country, for example).

Current methodologies in Costa Rica do not offer the necessary overt clues, or support, for the adaptations that are necessary to take the best of teacher centered approaches and mix them with other types of teaching strategies in order to implement more context-sensitive ones. However, there are always useful implicit clues, and if instructors think about what they do, how they do it, and why they do it, a successful approach can be developed. 

Since there are no pre-established road maps to guide the process, it is important to be able to exchange ideas and have feedback from other teachers similarly interested. Together it is possible to answer key questions such as:

•  Which teaching model am I using?
•  How does it apply in specific teaching situations?
• How well is it working?

The process of reflecting on our actions and incorporating lessons learned to new practices should not be seen only as something work related, but as a way of life. So I agree with the author of the article we’re commenting this week when he says that: “the cycle of theory-building, practice and reflection continues throughout a teacher’s career, as the teacher evaluates new experiences and tests new or adapted theories against them”,  but I  would like to take it one step beyond. For me, this habit of analyzing everything I do against the impacts of my actions, is not just linked to my profession, it has become second nature for everything I do. 

Tools are welcome in this life-immersion approach to teaching and learning. For instance, the use of a portfolio for systematizations of the cycle of theory-building, practice and reflection, is a very useful idea. Time constrains, however, tend to curtail the practice limiting the size and scope of the files to short notes on what has worked, what you were able to do, or what was left for the following week and why. Many times these notes are not reviewed again, until the end of the year when a final report is made for the teaching supervisors, and support material is necessary.  

Time constrains are the curse of the teachers. Contrary to other professions, in which once you have finished the working hours and go home, you can leave everything behind, fifty percent of teachers’ work is done away from classes. If teachers were to be provided with sufficient preparation hours within their work schedule, this would be no problem. Unfortunately, in most schools, that is not the current practice and once home, teachers have to devote personal and family time to correct students’ work, design learning sessions, and assessment tools. Such important work is not only not covered by the educational institution’s remuneration scheme, but the vacation time allotted the teachers does not compensate for the strains on the teacher’s family and social life.

The competition for the teachers’ time and attention mentioned above also causes them to lack behind in the amount of reflective, creative work they can do. It is understandably a great relief when they can find textbooks (and associated resources) that facilitate or liberate them from those tasks. The down side of such “gifts”, is that the lesson design doesn’t necessary follow the needs of the students (in their local context), but the standards of a system designed for ESL students in another culture.

So, when I reflect upon what teaching is, I find that teaching is not just delivering information, or putting yourself at the service of the student’s learning process, in a competent, innovative, and compassionate way. Teaching also involves other direct and indirect aspects that greatly influence the potential benefits it may unlock. It is a responsibility that commits our entire society. One whose analysis and improvements should be guided not only by private enterprises, or particular governments’ interests, but by the hopes and desires that we have as a nation, for our descendants’ future.

Ref: WHAT LANGUAGE TEACHING IS. From The Essentials of Language Teaching

www.nclrc.org/essentials. A project of the National Capital Language Resource Center

©2003-2007

---

[1] Learning and Teaching: research- Based Methods, by Donald P- Kauchack from University of Utha, and Paul D. Eggen, from University of North Florida,. 1998. Allyn & Bacon, a Viacom Co. MA.