What it Means to be a Good Teacher - Term Paper Example

What it Means to be a Good Teacher and how to be a Good Teacher The act of being a teacher means a number of things, where all the factors that lead to teaching and being effective are laid out for the people intending to be teachers. With this in mind, being a teacher means being knowledgeable, in which case the amount of knowledge that a teacher has is important to his or her position as a teacher. This is because without the lack of knowledge, there is no reason for one to be in a position to impart knowledge, skills and attitudes to learners according to cognitive theories of learning. Being a teacher is a mark of the authority or being authoritative over the learners that the teacher teaches by virtual of having more knowledgeable and skillful than the learners under his or her guidance. With this in mind, being a teacher means having gone through an education process on how to teach and having knowledge relevant to the learners. In addition, being a teacher means being a part of the reflective cycle of the teaching and learning process, in which case it plays a large role in ensuring that one is a teacher. With this in mind, being a teacher means having a profound level of education in teaching and in the knowledge that already has as the cycle dictates presence in experience, which is translation of having a presence in the classroom. In this case, the attendance does not refer to a physical attendance in the classroom, but instead depicts the presence of the world in the classroom. This further translates to the teacher perceiving the world according to the learners present in the classroom and making attempts to correct their situation in terms of their perceptions of the outside world, which the teacher does from the within the classroom (Rodgers, 2002). In addition, the presence experience as being a teacher refers to the way of the teacher acting in the perspective of the learners, where the teacher is taken to be an artist who is good at his or her work. This translates into the teacher having to capture the presence of the world in the classroom and bringing it to life in the classroom for the learners to observe, see and perceive. Being a teacher, therefore, means fully engaged in the class activities and attempting, if not being actually at par with the thinking and perception capabilities of the learners. This is to mean that being a teacher involves the application of alternative frameworks for the learners in order to come down to the level of the learners, which is a form if the rules of engagement between teachers and learners. Alternative frameworks are used to refer to the fact that the teacher should not make assumptions that something is easy or difficult for all learners, but to engage them instead at their level through guidance, where attention is the main concept to be focused on in order to act on the needs of the learners. In order to be a good teacher, there a number of aspects to be focused on that make a teacher effective in his or her job, as well as how he or she relates with learners. In this perspective to be a good teacher, there is need for description experience, which involves learning to describe and differentiate. This works hand in hand with engagement of learners and their perception, where the teacher must know how to assist learners in solving their learning difficulties. This is evident in the differentiation part, where it is up to the teacher to lose oneself in the process of learning, where the teacher should not pay attention to only aspect or angle of learning and teaching, but allow him/her to discover new things and learn from them. This is so that the teacher maintains an objective mind and approach to explaining things to learners and assisting them in their perception. As such, being a teacher involves being listening to the perspectives and perceptions of learners then combining with their experiences in order to come up with the most effective and objective means of correcting misconceptions without necessarily believing that the teacher is right. As a result, a teacher can improve his or her skills by listening more and paying attention to different factors that affect the perception of learners, especially objectivity, which allows for the description of terms and activities that learners have trouble understanding (Paley, 2007). In order to be a good teacher, there is also the analysis of experience aspect that focuses on thinking critically and creating theories, which comes in handy in the explanation of misconceived concepts (Yost, 2000). Putting this into perspective means that it is the role of the teacher to think critically, which does not mean overlooking the perspective of the learner, but this is for the purpose of learning and self-improvement. Theorizing is part of the explanation process, in which the teacher uses the information collected and descriptions achieved to come up with possible scenarios or outcomes of certain events. Relating these to the learning process, the teacher can improve him or herself by finding out how to help learners as the teacher gains deep insight into the problems of learners and how they can be helped. It is because of this that the last step of reflection is based on experimentation experience, which is another important aspect of being a good teacher (Dan, n.d). This is because after the entire teaching and correcting process, the teacher can finally allow the learners to witness or conduct the experiment to affirm their knowledge. Experiments are the best way to engage learners and assist them to understand, and correct their misconception, while building the experience of the teacher in tackling similar events. In conclusion, being a teacher means being knowledgeable in the activity areas that learners are involved in, and having experience in the same. This is carried out by paying attention to the learners and being objective, as well as engaging in different levels of thought by going down to their level and attempting to be logical to communicate with them at their level. References Paley, V. G. (2007). On Listening to What the Children Say. Harvard Educational Review, 77(2), 152-163. Rodgers, C. (2002). Seeing Student Learning: Teacher Change and the Role of Reflection. Harvard Educational Review, 72(2), 230-253. Yost, D. S., Sentner, S. M., & Forlenza-Bailey, A. (2000), An Examination of the Construct of Critical Reflection: Implications For Teacher Education Programming in the 21st Century. Journal of Teacher Education, 51(1), 39-49. Dan, P. (n.d). How to Be a Good Teacher. WikiHow. Retrieved from http://www.wikihow.com/Be-a-Good-Teacher Read More