Teaching and learning are two sides of the same coin. So I find it is essential if you want to be a teacher that you are first and foremost a learner. There is an old saying: “You can take a horse all the way to water, but you can’t make it drink.” I think it applies to teaching as well, because I do not think you can set up to teach anyone. Well, perhaps you can, but I am doubtful of how successful you will be. I’m sure the other person will learn something, but it probably will be different than what you originally intended.
As a teacher you have to be sensitive to your environment and the people (what ever their age) that you will be creating new knowledge with.
You have to be creative and flexible, but at the same time provide a clear sense of where the limits are.
You have to be a good communicator, which doesn’t only mean that you have to be knowledgeable about the topic you cover, and precise in the way you express yourself, but you also have to take into consideration the audience’s possibilities of listening and understanding, as well as their willingness to move with you into the subject you are exploring.
You have to know their limits, so you know how much to push or pull without breaking anything, but above all, you must know yours. You have to know yourself and all the traps your ego can create, so you can act from love, and not react from fear, or false pride, or shame, or rage.
To list who were my role models would be way too lengthy. The road that took me to my current teaching post has been inspired by wonderful teachers like Mahatma Gandy, and Mother Theresa of Calcutta; by philosophers like Plato and Seneca, Averroes, Sir Francis Bacon, Descartes, Hegel, Kant, Kierkegaard Marx, Confucius, Sun-Tzu, and many others; writers like Eduardo Galeano, Isabel Allende, Silvia Plat, Hemmingway, Shakespeare, Vonnegut, Asimov, Herman Hess, and so on and so forth. But I also learned from my daily interactions with common people, and from the students and colleagues I’ve had.
Many showed me what I could do, some what I should do, a few what I couldn’t do, and countless other what I shouldn’t do. Their teachings go with me into whatever I do or not do, and now, with sufficient distance, to all I am grateful.
As I am close to completing the curriculum requirements for my Bachelor’s degree in English teaching and translation at ULACIT, I have registered for a course that I think will help round up what I have learned during these two years, and will provide me with an opportunity to have a mirror where to look into the reflection of what I do and how I do it.
Feedback from peers and experienced tutors is priced and precious, so if I have to name a few goals I hope to accomplish with this course, they would be:
· To continue to improve the methodologies that I use to teach
· To share with my colleagues some practices which have yielded positive results.
· To be able to express my doubts and even some of my frustrations in a group that can provide understanding and comfort.
