When you picture a "teacher" in your head, what images come to your mind?
A strict teacher, who expects a very respectful and disciplinarian atmosphere in class?, someone who dislikes any mistakes or carelessness on the part of the students?
A friendly teacher, who acts like a friend for his/her students and always tries to combine both guidance of a teacher and understanding of a friend?
A funny teacher, who always wants to see his/her students smile and makes learning a pleasurable experience, although , this can make classes become not as serious and meaningful for students as they should be.
A traditional teacher, who spends a lot of time talking and using the board and explaining things with occasional questions to or from the learners which leads to little interaction in class.
Are these some of the images that came to your mind?. Probably, and there may have been some others more.
The question here is, Is there a right type of teacher? Can we define the work of a teacher in one single word. Can we stereotype teachers in one single way?
The answer is "NO", we cannot.
Teachers, as guidance force in students' lives, profoundly impact their lives and the course of their future, they are a constant companion for some of the most important days of our lives. In other words, teacher are so meaningful and valuable in our growing process that there is no way that we can describe their job in such an easy way.
Is teaching and learning the same?
Teaching does not equal learning; to put it bluntly, teaching does not necessarily lead to learning. Teaching can be happening but this does not automatically mean that learning is occurring.
Sometimes teachers put great effort on developing the teaching activity for no learning to be taken place; likewise, a teacher could be seemingly doing nothing, but the students be learning a great deal.
There is normally an assumption that the role of a student, is mainly to absorb and store the received learning and the teacher, who is responsible for "spreading" knowledge to the class. Unfortunately, this is not the accurate way of how people learn.
The process of learning indeed, needs a number of things beyond being exposed to knowledge. Amongst other things, this process has to be related to communication and sharing. Students bring to class, not only with a pen and paper, and a fully receptacle brain, they bring with a whole range of less visible things to class: their needs, their wishes, their life experience, their home background, their their memories, their worries, their anger, their dreams, their moods, their day so far, and we as teachers must be able to find ways to relate these mentioned less visible things to the process of learning and guiding. Enabling learning rather than performing as a teacher , goes a long way to creating conditions in which learning can take place.
Three broadly types of teachers:
The Explainer
This kind of teacher relies mostly on "explaining" as a way of conveying information. The Explainer teacher, can create a very entertaining, interesting and informative class, in which students occasionally make and answer questions, take notes and are partially personally involved. Students are asked to practice and do extra activities to reinforce the finished lectured.
The Involver
This kind of teacher is able to use appropriate teaching and organisational procedures and techniques to learn about a certain subject or topic. This teacher tries to involved students actively and makes great effort into finding interesting and meaningful activities in which students can participate and learn at the same time.
Explaining lessons can be useful for this kind of teacher as well but always lookin¡g for an active participation of the student in class.
The Enabler
This kind of teacher is confident enough to share control with the learners. For this kind of teacher, all decisions made in class must be shared and negotiated with the learners. This teacher, is always creating conditions that enable the students to learn for themselves. Traditional teaching may take place occasionally and only when needed, but acting more as a guide, counsellor, and resource of information. This teacher completely aware of how individual and groups are thinking and feeling within the class. This teacher is always planning methods on building effective working relationships and good classroom atmosphere.
As mentioned before, there no way of way of categorising teachers under one, three or more headings, so these three types of teachers are very broadly painted. We as teacher must find elements of each category that are true and positive for us. To find a balance between them may be really challenging but possible.
Do not picture yourself as any certain type of teacher, but picture yourself as the professional who can find ways of using the best features of every type of teacher to convey knowledge, encourage cooperation and participation, and stimulate communicative and meaningful learning in every lesson.
The only one word I would use to describe teaching would be "memorable", only making memorable classes, we can lead not only to learning but creating life experiences of every finished lesson.
What kind of teacher do you relate the most? What kind of teacher do you prefer?
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