4/30/13

Flexibility and Awareness, two Key Words

I have been lately wondering what it really implies to be an effective teacher.
By looking for an answer to this question  I have come to the conclusion that being flexible with our own principles and aware of our kid´s reality may be key issues  in understanding our role today !
Society has changed and kids today have realities which are totally different from ours at their age, those kids’parents have also very different lifes compared to our parents´. Parents are too busy and tend to solve whatever situation the child has to face to make it easier, to make it quicker, so as to go on with his/her responsibilities. Children are too demanding , they are used to having their parents solving their things , doing what they want, responding to those demands, and of course we have kids that live a couple of days with their mother and some other days with their father, which makes them very flexible but at the same time very disorganised!
As a consequence of all this being a teacher today implies accompanying   children in all these aspects.   Passing   on knowledge, correcting mistakes, and reporting on sts’ behaviour is not enough! We have to develop many more skills to be able to help them grow.  
What we bring from the places where we studied, is mainly connected to the academic fields,  to the teaching of contents, but what about the rest? As soon as we start working at a school we get to know that contents are  just a  part of the reality we will have to face.
We are teachers of young children and this implies a great responsibility, I read in an article that “Many educators feel that effectiveness as a  teacher stems from a combination of knowledge, skills and personal characteristics” ( Katz 1993)The point is  that while our knowledge can be increased, our personal characteristics are likely to be more fixed. This is the reason why, it may be so difficult for us to accept, understand and comprehend the different kids we have in our classrooms. Some of them may be more similar to our styles or to what we believe should be correct, in some other cases we have to make an effort to understand some kids’ atittudes and it is essential to develop a plan to help them. There is no other way rather than showing those kids our personal interest in them that will be effective at the moment of creating bonds and strong bonds will be the password to successful learning.
To conclude I would say that as teachers we should get engaged with each and every student , trying to enjoy building and developing relationships with them,  this will  be the only way to make a difference .
Our students need us and  only by seeing  them improve, in both academic and emotional aspects ,we will feel we have reached the top of our own success criteria.

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4 comments:

  1. I absolutely agree that creating genuine, strong bonds with our children, is the only way of helping them improve. In my opinion emotinons are directly linked to learning. When we show affection, kids trust us. But whe I talk about affection, I include LIMITS. Children expect and need adults who can guide and conduct them at school as in life. Being an effective teacher is an objective that we all want to reach but we will never completely accomplish!!!

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    1. Patri, what a topic! We always talk about this, because both of us, troughout the years, have been able to see, how all these aspects have impacted in our students' ways of acting.I insist on the importance of assuming that we, teachers, have to help them out whatever personal situation or personal difficulties they may have!

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  2. Vivi, I really liked your post and the caption you includeded! Social relationships are getting more and more complex so we need to be flexible to assimilate and accomodate to fit in our society and to be effective in our role as educators. HAPPY WORKERS DAY!!!!

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  3. Your post reminds me of NLP and another comment I made in your blogs some time ago. Kids, just like adults, are all different and have different personalities, opinions and ways of acting which might be positive for them in their eyes but negative for us. We cannot look at everyone with the same eyes since every single person comes and goes with a different baggage which makes them unique. If we start our day thinking that every person has a positive intention in the behaviour which, to our eyes is negative, we might lower anxieties and give ourselves room to think what might be going on with that person. Positioning ourselves to the same level we might be able to understand the behaviour, or the answer he/she gave us. But if we keep seeing things from above, we might miss information.
    In my opinion, this is a way of showing flexibility, showing the other your are NEXT to him/her, not above, so that you can look at him/her into the eyes and feel what's going on, you aknowledge the person and the problema, you show your awareness.
    And this is useful for both children and adults because, even though we seem to be more conscious about certain aspects, we also have such and such families, such and such problems and such and such situations in life which might show ourselves as disorganized persons, irresponsible, not consistent or even misbehaved adults!

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