Let me introduce this sign that might be represent about an idea of teaching.
Teaching is not only something you do to other people but it is you and your moment by moment relationship with other human beings. To be yourself. Not play the role of a teacher, but to take the risk of being vulnerable, human, and honest. As Gaie Houston (1990) has written that "The foundation of rapport is to
learn yourself enough that you know what style you have and when you are
being truthful to yourself".
I have been a teacher since i was in the third semester of University and I have been teaching for all kind of levels (kids, teenagers, adults, and business). There are many things that I have faced through all moments in the class. But when I flashed back to those moments when i started teaching at the first time around 4 or 5 years ago until now, sometimes some questions appear 'What does the thing that makes us enjoy teaching? How do you feel the student's presence? To what extent do you think your personal style as a teacher is based to some degrees on these role models? Which of the kind of teachers that suit you?'
Figure 1
Here,
We may share to answer those curious questions and bring our perspective to create a part of the enjoyment of being a student in a good classroom is in sharing the unique personal identify, style, skills, and techniques that a teacher brings to a lesson.This situation that we are going to build is as warm as we can, students come up with their ideas and opinion. Feel free for sharing and no pressure.
We won't this Figure 1 situation happen while we are teaching, will we?
'Which images of teaching have you been exposed to?'
Adrian Underhill has suggested that there may be 3 broad categories of teaching styles that may help us to make a reflection what kind of teaching style we have or what kind of teacher we want to be.
THE EXPLAINER
This kind of teacher relies mainly on 'explaining' or 'lecturing' as a way of conveying information to the students. This teacher's lesson can be very informative. Students are listening, perhaps occasionally answering the questions, making notes, but are mostly not being personally involved or challenged.
THE INVOLVER
This teacher is able to use appropriate teaching and technique to help students learn about the subject matters 'Teacher explanations' may be on of these techniques, but he or she is trying to involve students actively and puts a great deal of effort into finding an interesting activities, while still retaining clear control over the classroom and what happens in it
THE ENABLER
This teacher is confident enough to share control with the learners. In many cases, teacher takes his/her lead from the students, seeing herself as someone whose job is to create the condition that enable the students to learn for themselves. Teacher may become a 'guide, counselor, or resource of information when needed', the class will work well under its own steam, when a lot of autonomous learning is going on, teacher may be hardly visible.
These simple categorizations may help us to reflect on what kind of teaching we have mostly experienced in our life so far and may also help us to clarify what kind of teacher we see ourselves as being now or in the future.
So, lets think of some people we have been taught by in the past. Which of the three descriptions above best suits each one?
This may give you some ideas about which images of teaching you have been exposed to and influenced by.
Warm regards,
ASR TJS
Reference: Scrivener, Jim. 2005. Learning Teaching: A guidebook for English language teachers Second Edition. UK: Macmillan.