Teaching is an
ancient, sacred and great profession. Unfortunately, people who teach don't correspond
to this profession very often. I want to say that it's not easy to teach. Teaching
is a very complicated process. To teach means to educate, to bring up, but not
only this.
Teaching is not
only giving knowledge about any particular subject, but giving knowledge about
life. Don't think that "to teach how to live” means not giving stupid pieces of
advice about life and saying that you are the only person who knows how to live
in this world. "To teach how to live” is to share your life experience with your
pupils and students.
So a teacher is
a friend, a tutor, a parent, in a way, an ideal of a human being. That's why, if
a person wants to teach, he must understand children and the way they think,
must have only positive features of character, must hide all his bad sides of
character, must realize that these children are incipient personalities. A teacher
is a ray of light in the dark kingdom of ignorance.
To help a child
to shape his/her personality is a bull work. Unfortunately, not all teachers can do it. Conventionally, we have two main types of pedagogics: a humane
one and authoritarian.
The authoritarian
type has its aim in stuffing knowledge into children's minds. The object of an authoritarian
pedagogy is a biological creature named Homo Sapiens' young one.
The aim of humane pedagogics is developing of an educated personality. The object is a
human being's child.
I have just
written a term paper. Its theme was "Shalva Amonashvili's humanistic conceptions
in modern world”. As far as I can judge there are many authoritarian teachers
in Russia nowadays. They communicate with their students in a way of orders. They
ruin children's personalities. Fortunately, there are also humane teachers. They
understand students, their thoughts and wishes. They try to explain this or
that fact in the most proper way.
To be a great
Teacher one should have an inborn genius. I don't want to say that a person
can't become a Teacher without this inborn gift, but it's more difficult for
him/her to achieve the ideal of Humane Pedagogue.
Dear friends, if you
want to connect your future life with teaching, I desire that you should become a great
humane teacher!
I would like to pick up post 31 and continue the point. I feel that being friends with students is often a teasing goal but if I start thinking about my experience, I really disbelieve. I get often disappointed at the fact that neither my students nor myself are ready for this. Fortunately, this is quite natural and honest. When your classes were over and your summer vacations started, I really hoped that all of my students would remain active on the site, just out of mere respect to me. But it turned out that life is more complicated and I should never assume that teaching should or can go beyond formal conditions. So, I have to redesign my principles and remain steady about my point. I wanted students to be active using English, learning from each other, sharing their thoughts and life views, raising their awareness about miscellaneous things... but I was acting like a teacher, and I have no right to feel offended by the fact that almost no one is working on the site now. But I want to continue working myself, it is interesting for me and the devoted few. If participation comes to a dead-end, I will undertake some other form.
Only like a teacher. There is no other way to be effective and sensible. As a teacher I should remember that I can give recommendations for the summer period, but I should never require any work and self-studies. That's definite. If a student does this, it is not the teacher's achievement. It is the student's own initiative.
You are right. The teacher really contributes a lot. But I want my students to make such contributions. Let me put in another way - online communicartion on the website is the second most important factor that will make students competent, knowledgeable and competative. I want my studetns to understand that they have a lot to learn from each other. SO our site-based communication is not for the sake of communication, but for the sake of learning.
Just because I often doubt that a teacher should get involved with somebody's development too much. Seagull said above, "understand students, their thoughts and wishes". Why must I care? A human being is not a machine or any other piece of equipment. How can I understand your wishes, thoughts, opinions, feelings, needs and plans? Does my student understand that I understand him or her? Does my student understand that I really know better what to do and how to do things? Why must I spend time on all these mussy-pussy things? You want to develop, then trust and work and learn. When you have worked and learnt, you have educated yourself. At this point go on developing.
You have more experience than we. And sometimes, for example, if you see some of us in a bad mood, you let him/her work not so hard as others. Isn't it understanding? You understand our wishes and thoughts through our work, through what we say at our lessons. It's less difficult to wade through the depths of a forest with the help of a guide, and it's less difficult to learn,work and develop with the help of a teacher.
Teachers are not parents or friends and relationships with them shouldn't turn into sharing each other's wishes, fears and hopes. But I agree with Seagull,teachers are more experienced, more wise and tolerant.They understand us from the height of their experience.
I am not talking about friendship between a teacher and his student. I think they can become friends only after the student finishes his studies and becomes a professional.
I mean it's better to be colleagues, partners, fellow-teachers, business associates and the like. The problem is not with a teacher, it is also a student's problem. Is a student ready for firendship and is it necessary? Is it what he needs from the teacher? Does the student really want his teacher to be his friend? What for?
Friendship is unnesessary. A student needs knowledge and experience, sometimes he/she also needs a kind of support. Probably, there are students who want his/her teacher to become his/her friend.
Being your teacher, I will never be your friend. Not because it is impossible but because it is bad. It will ruin the idea of teaching and upbringing. A parent can never be and must never be a freind to a his/her child. A teacher is not a person just to talk to on every matter of life. Even if it happens, you should remember that a true teacher should be an adviser, a counsellor, a thinker, an assistant, a leader, a critic but not a freind.
I wanted to add that there is nothing bad about the authoritarian style of teaching as long as it never comes to physical or emotional abuse. What is bad about showing what is definitely right or wrong, good or bad, necessary or useless, effective or foolish! Developing a personality is good but it takes a whole lifetime. When you stuff a person with knowledge and equip him or her with skills and habits, it takes far less time and this person will definitely be unbeatable and more successful in the modern world. This then will be used for a more profound self-development and growth. What is more, the person will never have experienced any emotional pressure caused by the fact that he has remained unknowledgeable but able, incompetent but curious, undertaught but attentive. I have my own experience of teaching in both ways - in most cases the authoritarian style works better because students always doubt professional teachers who know how to develop them.
Clarifying eternal truths is a teacher's right, of course. But this implies great responsibility. And some teachers just make students think he/she is right! I mean they don't tolerate any objections.
Teaching seems to be a very demanding profession. Is it difficult? No more difficult than being an engineer or a truck-driver or a pilot. It has its own peculiar features that for many are a stress factor. I don't know anything about an inborn genius. Ut is often the matter of intellectual influence: are you sure that you've got somehing that ought to be taught to somebody else? ARe you sure that the way you think and learn is good enough for others to adopt? Are you patient enough to communicate to others what you know or are just discovering for the first time? Can you envision how the learner's mind will develop and what is necessary for the learner's mind? Do you know what is primary and what is secondary? Can you explain that? I think I can do all of these. I am not a genius. I just can't do anything else professionally. I wish I could.
To tell the truth, I started dreaming of being a teacher when I was at school, about 15 years of age. I wanted to immitate my school teacher of English. But the main driving factor was learning English. I think I just liked the fact that I could speak the language. When at Uni, I didn't think much of teaching, I thought mostly of doing the language and finding as much time for it as possible. I managed. I immitated some teachers, I quarrelled with other teachers. But when in 1985 I started working in a rural school, I understood that I liked it. I have been teaching since then.
Yes, of course. Many times. I did oral interpretation and written translation. I did well. But to tell the truth I did not like it very much. At some point it became boring.
Agree with you! I'm lucky to know some of them but it's so difficult to imagine myself being a good teacher! Well, I have 4 years left to decide) And do you have a wish to become a teacher?
Well, could you be more precise? Whay do you feel inspired? What is so envolving and inspiring in the teaching profession? I have a hunch that you aren't honest.
