What Kind of Teacher am I Going to be?

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Introduction

In every single class I attended during this whole semester, I must admit that a lot of my preconceived ideas of teaching changed drastically. Concepts so highly regarded by an outdated system such as grammar, translation, behaviourism, stimuli, among others started to look quite trivial when we actually begin to put our focus in matters as important as motivation, just to name one. I cannot do but regard this class as a new beginning in all the educational topics I ever thought about, with a fair amount of ‘positive’ drills (like a constant ‘no grammar focus’ repetition) and with a perpetual discussion on varied topics related to our current educational system, making contrasts between what a teacher should be and what teachers actually act like, new ideas flowed to shape an updated notion of teaching.

Ideas & conclusions

Along this semester, whilst studying some of the texts and the ideas contained within them, there was something that caught my attention and that for sure was something difficult to understand at first: I am talking about teaching classes with a full student-focused approach. It was hard, as well as confusing, to think that to be a better teacher you have to stop thinking about your performance and start putting your students as the focal point of your lessons. This can be quite a challenge, especially when the first thing we want our students to see is a prepared and confident teacher in front of the class, and yet our aim should be on students putting attention on themselves, interacting and communicating between them rather than with the teacher. This is one of the many reasons why in Harmer’s text ‘Teachers and Learners’ there is a big amount of information covering important issues s...

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...rfect method/approach. Perhaps it is thanks to our society and the current state of Chile, living under a paradigm too narrowed and outdated that teachers stick to the ‘old’ ways instead of innovating and learning about the new strategies in contemporary education. (which should be a teacher’s premise of a lifetime). If someday this was to change and our system goes beyond in the paradigm change, maybe we can contribute to the evolution of some methods, such as CLT and its latest developments in current societies due to our country tendencies in technology, or allow us to finally change the teaching focus to a more constructivist one in which contents are not presented anymore as grammatical units, but by its function. However the way it may happen, the possibilities for our society and our kids are countless, and more important, needed as soon as possible.

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