The Teaching Box

I would have been a good teacher if only I never had to deal with students, pupils and parents. It was overheard at a professional development workshop. I seldom hear teachers say that they want to be good teachers but I hear them say that some weaknesses that they have prevent them from being the best teachers. Regardless of whether that “weakness” is no training, good knowledge in learning, no courage or any other thing suggests that there is some kind of absoluteness for teachers to yearn for. Being a good teacher that I can be is a great aim. But my best is a comparative thing. When I was young it was not similar from when I did not have a spouse and when I had a kid at home. The lack of similarity was based on what I knew and what I had at that time. Despite the fact that the best teacher is a theory, we can try to describe him/her. I shall begin with the theory vs. the truth.

The first theory is that the best teacher has an MA or DELTA.

The Truth: If you are seeking for a job as a teacher of English, a degree or advanced certificate is a must. Unfortunately that does not mean that one is able to teach. The certificates that I have might have secured me a job but a lot of the knowledge I have on teaching, I acquired it after my studies. The fact that you have passed through University does not mean that you can teach. Teaching is about confidence and good master of the subject. The presence of social networks and online educators, we can get something to learn. Whatever you need to learn to be a good teacher may necessarily not be similar with what you need to learn. Though we have different things to learn, we can help each other.

The second theory is that the best teacher is a native English speaker.

The truth: Quite a good number of teachers I know got to learn English as a third or second language. This theory comes with a lot of bias since these teachers normally teach in their own countries; this means that the language and education needs of their students are well known to them than to me. Being a native speaker or not, any one that has that passion of teaching and is good in it can teach. Every teacher has his/her own perceptions and exposure which when allotted to us will make us efficient teachers too. Mostly, if one is not a good speaker of English, he/she tends to hold back from allotting and he/she might be having very good stuff to say. In most cases, what people lack is confidence and also fear to be ridiculed. It may be frightening to be the first to allot you perceptions on the teaching of English but engaging in this is what improves your confidence and builds your language ability. We all gain when we hear from different people in forums and this increases what we already know.

The last theory that we will discuss is that the best teacher is usually self driven and confident.

The truth: Quite a number of my advancements as a teacher are as a result of lack of self belief and self drive. When you do something with a lot of fear and you do it perfectly is when you gain confidence but if you do something with a lot of confidence and you mess, you will be down cast. On my side, I find it hard to force myself to try new things when all is alright. I do not whether I had begun to advance as a teacher until I discovered that I actually was not sure of what actually was doing. Self drive is an unusual thing because you cannot force yourself to try what you do not of for fear of messing it up. When the economy is tough, that is when the teachers do not have money, they find themselves teaching for extra hours in order to cater for essential things like rent and food. While passing through all this, it is usually hard to be self driven. It is not just alright but it is normal for one to lose psych. Offline and online groups assist us to have and maintain our psych but time comes when teaching is just a job. Nothing more. The advantage is that, the training that we were given in school enables us to give the best to our students until our actual self drive comes back.

Author Bio: Lena Paul is a medical school graduate who is an enthusiastic blogger and holds an editorial position in Prepgenie, a test prep provider that offers exam preparation courses for GAMSAT, PCAT, LNAT, UKCAT and UMAT.