What kind of teacher are you?

Be a teacher The human being has always been characterized by the need to classify and classify. Ask Aristotle if not. Probably this innate need to classify and order helps us to better understand the world around us and, of course, to understand ourselves better.

In this blog, I am not very given to opinion articles. But this entry is intended to reflect on our task in the classroom and ask what kind of teacher we are. All this comes in the wake of a famous quote from the American writer William Arthur Ward. If you want to know more about this character, I refer you to the following link. Well, this writer and teacher are known for his famous quotes. And of all these appointments, the one that interests me and the one that this post will deal with is a quote that talks about the types of teachers that exist in their opinion. For William Arthur Ward:

" The mediocre teacher says. The good teacher explains. The superior professor demonstrates. The great teacher inspires "

"The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires "

I have reflected a lot on this appointment or classification, depending on how you look at it, and it has given me a lot to think about because in my career as a teacher I feel identified with some of the professors that Willam Arthur Clark speaks about.

As I said at the beginning, this is an opinion piece. That is why I will explain from my point of view what I understand by a mediocre teacher, a good teacher, a senior teacher, and a great teacher. I want to make it clear in advance that it is simply my opinion and my point of view on these four conceptions of the decencies.

Very likely in some you will agree with me and in others, you will disagree, but basically what I intend is that we all stand for a moment and think about what kind of teacher we are and what kind of teacher we aspire to be.

Teacher

The photograph was taken from the Venice image bank

Discovering what kind of teacher you are.

1. The mediocre teacher says.

When a teacher says something, he only expresses a thought with words. For me, the mediocrity of a teacher who only says is that what he says or transmits to his students does not reach those students. We make the mistake of thinking that by speaking or saying that which touches us on a subject we assume that our students have grasped and understood it.

For me, the teacher essay help who says is a teacher who knows but is not able to transmit their knowledge in a way that reaches the student. He is a flat, monotonous teacher, who speaks, but who does not teach, who says but who does not learn. He is a teacher unable to reach the hearts of his students, unable to capture their attention and curiosity, which hardly interacts with them. He is a teacher that students forget easily with the passage of time. He is the teacher who leaves no mark on his students. And I think that teaching is much more than expressing thought with words.

Personally, I believe that all of us who love teaching and live it as part of our daily lives must learn to do our best to avoid settling in mediocrity or, what is the same, in stagnation and lack of commitment. I believe that our profession is an excellent opportunity to be better and to make better those we have in front of us.

2. The good teacher explains.

There is no doubt that experience is a key factor for the improvement of our teaching work, but it is not the only factor. For me, the good teacher is one who, from experience, is able to recognize their strengths and weaknesses. He is a teacher who corrects what does not work for him, who continually reviews his work, learns from his students and colleagues, who are in constant training, who has concerns, who makes his profession a tool by which to do better the society of which it is a part.

The difference between a teacher who says and a teacher who explains is abysmal from my point of view. If we look at the meaning of the verb explain that gives us the Royal Spanish Academy of Language we will see how the second meaning of the verb explains: " Declare or expose any difficult subject, doctrine or text, with very clear words to make them more perceptible." Observe the richness of nuances that this definition gives us. Interestingly, the vast majority of students classify their teachers according to whether they explain well or badly or simply does not explain (just says). Well, according to this definition, the good teacher is one who transcends his thinking to get their students to understand knowledge in a comprehensible way.

The good teacher strives to make his students understand what he explains and that is why he continuously interacts with his students, makes his classes participatory, modifies his methodology according to the needs of the group, reinvents himself course after course, which has as an objective to improve and that their students improve through their teachings.

The good teacher is one who has the gift of turning difficult into something easy and understandable through a good explanation. Many of us have had teachers throughout our schooling that we remember as teachers who explained very well, but I still want to think that it is not the teachers who leave us behind.

3. The superior teacher demonstrates.

Being a teacher that demonstrates, a superior teacher as William Arthur Ward says is a challenge. The teacher who demonstrates is a professor who knows how to explain, but its great virtue is that what he explains is capable of transferring it to a practice field. What do I mean by this? Well, he teaches his subject and applies pedagogy and didactics on this subject.

The teacher who demonstrates is the one who gets his students not only to learn but also to be competent students. It is a teacher who is able to apply the curriculum of his subject and relate it to real experiences, which teaches the usefulness of what he explains to his students, which is part of a teacher, but also a pedagogue. And therein lies the challenge I alluded to above.

I think that every teacher should try to be able to transcend what he says in order to explain it. but once he manages to explain satisfactorily, once he can explain clearly and simply to his students, the time comes to demand that he demonstrate that what he explains has a relationship with the reality surrounding his students and will be useful and applicable in some moment. It is a teacher who differentiates between a student who knows and a student who knows and is competent.

This teacher is in constant training, he is always learning, he is always connected with the world and with the people that make up this world. And of his concern and his demand, he shows his students that what they learn has as much meaning as usefulness.

4. The great teacher inspires.

We are in the last type of teacher, in what we could call excellence, a type of teacher reserved only for a few. If we continue attending the meaning of the Royal Spanish Academy of Language, we will see how to refer to the verb to inspire in its second meaning says: " Infuse or give birth in the mind, or the mind affects, ideas, designs... "

The first time I read this sentence I thought a lot about what it meant to me to be an inspiring teacher. At first, I related it to the knowledge that teachers have of our discipline, but I think that relating knowledge with inspiration is a mistake. For me, the teacher who inspires is not necessarily the teacher who knows the most.

All those who have gone through the university have proven how many of our teachers or doctors, are great experts or specialists in a certain way or discipline of knowledge, but they lack all pedagogy or didactic when sharing everything they know. In this sense, I think it convenient to separate inspiration from knowledge.

The teacher who inspires goes far beyond the mere knowledge, the mere transmission of knowledge. The teacher who inspires is the one who transcends his knowledge outside the classroom and translates it to what our lives are. The teacher who inspires is a type of teacher in whom we would like to see ourselves reflected, whom we take as an example, whom we love and appreciate as much as we admire, who transmits experiences and not only knowledge in the classroom.

This is really the teacher who leaves his mark throughout our entire life. He is the teacher we remember perfectly his name, the class he taught, his way of being, his way of transmitting. He is a teacher who transcends and by transcending I mean that he is the one who will accompany us throughout our life trajectory, the one who will be our reference throughout life, the one we will always remember with a smile because they have made us wiser, more educated, but above all, better people and excellent citizens. write essay for me

I have started this entry by naming the philosopher Aristotle. And I will finish with one of his famous quotes, which summarizes in part what we understand by Education.