The Big Myth about Teaching
A Life Packet for Teachers as Educators
As a first year teacher, you slowly will develop your own methodology and teaching philosophy.
This is because teaching has become a profession in which you study many hours understanding methods and practicum and only when you step into a classroom, do you have the opportunity to empower your students. Some days students cooperate, other days, students are like wild fire.
Here are some important myths that in my opinion need to be demythisized, if teachers are to enjoy any upgrade in status worldwide. I have heard such “myths” all over from the teacher’s room, to the bus stop to waiting on line at the supermarket.
The Myth: Teachers have such an easy life: they have (paid) summers off and teach until two or three in the afternoon. They just teach and leave the classroom.
The Reality : We are Educators Before We are Teachers
Much of what is spent planning for the next day’s work, goes into teaching in the classroom. Facts are facts: Teaching is a full day’s job, no matter how one chooses to look at it. However, a teacher's responsibility in essence is like a “gem.” This is because that a teacher's job falls automatically in the category of an educator. Before we teach our own subject material, we are educators . We cannot simply teach for the teaching's sake. Often our teaching spills into live opportunities for broadening the students' horizons or stimulating them cognitively, emotional and intellectually. This is our chance to shine as educators: we can open our textbooks to other side of the curriculum such as the Holocaust and themes such as the Olympics and childrens' rights. Kids thrive when they are challenged and want to share their ideas and opinions. Usually these themes coincide with the units of your textbooks.
As a new teacher, you might have to deal with unexpected issues like I have experienced with my students such as a terrorist attack. Students look to you for support and help. We don't always have the answers or not what to do but we need to connect the events of the outside world to our students and not to ignore their needs to talk, share, listen, understand. Using role plays and group work represent one extension for bringing an educator’s view into focus but they are not the only ways. The teacher has the golden opportunity of getting kids to think and questions issues and ideas – a very important life skill. Here are some other sites dealing with world issues:
Background to Terror (related links)
Final words
So teachers all around, when you plan your lessons, try and think how you can involve your students a bit more during your lessons.
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