BEING A TEACHER OR BEING A STUDENT
Knowledge is power (Sir Francis Bacon)
Most of us will agree that twitter and blogging has had a great impact on our teaching or self improvement. When I read my colleagues blog posts I find lots of similarities between me and them. The most important is the enthusiasm we have for teaching. We all talk about our classes and how much we care for our students.
We all say we are life-long learners. I think this is the key. I love being a student. I love taking notes, working on a subject, trying to find new ways for the things I’ve taught for hundreds of times.
As we all mentioned many times before, being an EFL teacher enables us to learn more as it’s not teaching grammar only. It’s teaching the life itself. It’s making the kids ready to cope with the difficulties. It’s teaching psychology when you feel they are bullying each other and trying to find a way to show them that’s wrong. It’s making them ready for team work when they bring them together for a project. It’s teaching them geography while talking about global warming or history when reading a text on Iron Age and people’s lifestyles…
Due to all these facts we need to be students. Vicky Loras commented on Arjana Blazic’s wonderful and inspiring blog post at Teaching Village saying ‘I feel like I am in university again’. I totally agree with her. Studying at university was different and it was a precious experience because I studied the thing I loved to study. Maybe it is because of that I still want to study and learn. I want to continue my journey in learning and I’m sure my teaching will benefit from it. Teaching and learning are so interwoven that it’s difficult to separate them from each other. All these online tools help us continue our self-development and I believe ‘Learning is power’
Great post,Eva.I choose to be side of being a student 🙂
Hi Eva,
I feel exactly the same. Thanks for putting it so nicely. I’m a lifelong learner and I’m proud of it!
Thanks for your sweet comment about the guest post.
Arjana
Great post! I completely agree that learning is power and love being part of such a community of teachers that are lifelong learners. I don’t know how some teachers expect their students to be lifelong learners when they have quit learning.
I think sometimes that this love of being a student is what’s behind a lot of us becoming EFL teachers. I mean, since English doesn’t really have a defined subject matter (like, say, engineering or medicine), anything we learn about can help us become better teachers.
In any case, it’s certainly more fun than any other job I can imagine!
Couldn’t agree more! The more we teachers remember this fact, the more professional and efficient we will be in our teaching practice. We don’t know it all and never will.