Skip to main content

Posts

To Educate or To Teach?

People define the words educate and teach differently. The people doing the job is called educator or teacher. Educator seems better since the person not only teaches but also has other responsibilities or roles such as providing moral values in the lessons, make students have positive attitude, knowing students’ condition, discovering the superiority of students, observing them carefully, and many more. The definition is broader than the definition of teacher. I refer the definition to other cases, actually. A teacher is defined as the one teaching and doing things relating to transferring knowledge. Some like being called an educator. What makes them different? The definition of the term or the real work? Are you a teacher or an educator? I still remember that my teachers ever talked about this. They said that they weren’t teachers but educators. They also showed the reasons of this matter. Others have got cool terms to refer teachers or educators like a chaos coordinator, ...
Post a Comment
Read more
Recent posts

Empowering

I'm an English teacher who tries to make my students happy, but I'm not a super teacher who always helps students make significant improvement. I've got some routines to make my class alive. My students leave good feedback dealing with this. I know about how to be a powerful and happy teacher because of my students. Started from greeting the students, I must always look happy and show positive looks. Greeting students enthusiastically is the power or energy for students. I should give positive welcome to students by smiling, helping students, asking students whether they've got problems, and seeing students. I make students ready to start the class and they talk something good to entertain and motivate students. I don't start the materials directly, but I start the classes with fun activities encouraging them to happily learn in my class. I empower them by giving good words, news, stories, facts, and so forth. I also manage my voice in my classroom. The ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Narrow Definition

I'm sure we ever heard that teaching is 1/4 and 3/4. 1/4 is for preparation and 3/4 is for performance. I absolutely agree with this. However, it doesn't mean that we prepare lessons in a very minimum level and get the best result. Imagine that the 1/4 preparation of a teacher is 1000, so the 3/4 of teaching of that teacher is different from those having 100 for their 1/4 of teaching. Preparing much isn't a mistake, but it might be that matter if it's preparing too much. Every teacher has got their own definition of 1/4 and 3/4 of teaching. This is why I'm quite irritated when I prepare lots of things for my lessons, and others comment that good teaching is 1/4 preparation and 3/4 theatre. I do agree with that, but it doesn't mean that we prepare nothing or we don't prepare well. We also know that the way be behave and treat students are always on students' memory instead of our methods. I totally agree with this, but this bothers me when others ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Teacher, -actually I call myself-, be a kid again, but still be mature.

Some teachers might be so excited to see cute things when going shopping for their classes or lessons. Others might think that those teachers are childish and haven't got happy childhood. Actually, it isn't about childish or mature. When teachers see cute things or children stuff and feel happy to buy them, it doesn't mean that they're immature. This is because their students need this stuff in the classroom. Let me illustrate, that a primary school teacher wearing kids-like clothes and bring a Spiderman bag doesn't mean that that teacher is childish. That teacher does this because s/he is with children. S/he wants to provide children environment since children are children. Let them grow and feel that they are children. Actually, what I want to write isn't about it. Kids grow up and have their own strengths. Can we do everything? Must we force students to be able to do what we master and neglect their skills which aren't in our subjects or majors? ...
Post a Comment
Read more

New Teachers

I recall when I was in the first day of teaching. I was supervised that day. When I were the supervisor, I would truly give bad comments for my own performance and presentation. I still remember that my schedule was given 15 minutes before the class going. I didn't know exactly what I had to do that time. I read the materials and entered the classroom. I began the class by greeting and starting introduction. Students and I tried to know each other. Then, students and I discussed the materials.  What was wrong with my teaching procedures? I knew it was the same, or almost similar, with other teachers working there. However, then, I did understand what I was doing seemed boring and common. I thought I had learnt all materials needed in the real teaching, but I was wrong.  There were a large number of considerations and teaching things which I didn't get when I was in the college. I asked my self, "What did I learn when I was in the college for four years?...
Post a Comment
Read more

Knowledge or Happiness?

Talking about teaching, it isn't as simple as some think about it. teachers are required to know more about their students, materials, and other things related. What's the main aim of education? Is it to make our students know what we teach in the classroom? Should we ask them to master our subject, but our students aren't interested in? Must we force or push them to get standardised scores in our subjects? How is happiness of students when they learn something? How is their mental? How do we understand and facilitate what they want and need in our classroom? What should we do when our students think that what we teach isn't useful for them? In the beginning of my teaching journey, I might focus on how well students master my subject. Then, I relaised that what I did might not be useful for students. Then, I try to teach about creativity of students in which students not only learn about the subjects but also activate or use them outside the classroom. Besides...
Post a Comment
Read more

Writing Vs Imagining

I wish I could always update what I've started. Actually, I'm writing not to tell others of how teaching English is, but these are for my own reminder since I can't manage my stuff of teaching things well. By writing them, I can easily check what I want to use for my following different classes. However, I'm not good writing, and vlog now seems more popular; I mean useful; than blog. I hope someday I can continue writing. Have I got vlog? No, I haven't. I keep updating my Instagram, @teflcase_teachingenglish. It doesn't mean that I provide awesome teaching tips or such stuff, but I just want to make such kinds of place to save what I have made, so that in a different occasion I can look at them again for some purposes. I, actually, try to write more procedures of teaching English for some class activities, but I may rethink to continue writing due to some reasons. I know Imagining is more fun that Writing; I think. Then, I don't write but imagine. My bad...
Post a Comment
Read more