Lidiando con el conductismo, Práctica Profesional...

Since I am a reasonable person I want to be a teacher, I think that is because through teaching we have the possibility to know different realities, to help people and to be helped by them (I mean to improve ourselves and to learn from others’ mistakes) at the same time. I have never imagined myself working in other place different from a classroom, what am I going to do in an office, a hospital, or in a bank? Nothing to do with me…

I consider that teaching is something really enriching because when you share your knowledge with someone else you are helping a lot. In this case my set of knowledge are supposed to be related with English, but that is not all, I mean apart from teaching English I have the responsibility to teach my students about values and how to face future’s challenges in life. I can not ignore what is going on in the classroom and just be worried about my lesson and that is it. Imagine that some of my students is having a personal problem and is crying, or even worse he or she is cutting his/her arm because of a depression…Can I continue my class as nothing happens? My goodness! Be a teacher is not just teaching, it is dealing with everyday’s situations, with people’s problems and feelings and if I chose being a teacher I can not ignore them and I have to be responsible of my job, the whole job…not just the part of giving classes and taking tests only.

Once I saw a movie, “Mr. Holland Opus”, in which the teacher, a music teacher, changes student’s feelings and student’s perception of life. I kept that idea as the ideal representation of teacher’s mission. I mean, what is more significant for a student: to have someone expert in English to teach him/her or to have a kind of friend who, apart from helps with academic problems, gives their students comfort and confidence to share life’s experiences?

If I have the chance to change student’s life, why am I not going to take it? We have to keep in mind that someone who hates English, for example, can decide to study English pedagogy after having a good teacher (A good teacher means someone not just good at English…)

I’m not going to recommend studying pedagogy to someone who wants to work just for the fact of earning money. For he or she there are several works that he/ she can do just for making money. On the other hand if someone wants to have a motivating work teaching is the one, if someone wants a really demanding and challenging work teaching is the one, if someone is creative, responsible, sensitive, empathic, sensible, etc, he/she can be a good teacher.

Now, talking about the practice, how can I be that kind of “ideal” teacher? Let’s see…

First of all we should to dominate the set of knowledge that we are going to teach, otherwise we are going to make our students feel insecure and uncomfortable being taught by someone that does not know enough. But, be careful, the idea is to facilitate the process of learning in our students, not being a human- dictionary as English teacher are wrongly supposed to be, in other words not giving them all for free.

Then, creativity and effectiveness should to be present in every single class. Take it as a MUST. If the process of learning is falling into routine then there is no meaningful learning. We have to keep our students motivated with the subject; we have to create an appropriate classroom’s climate and do not be afraid of mistakes because they are part of the process of learning. We should to have the ability to face different behaviors, different personalities, different likes and dislikes in our students so we have to be creative enough to cover those differences.

Nowadays teachers can be considered as parents also because students do not spend too much time with their families. So, as a part of our job, we are in charge of our student’s self-esteem and orientation. Feelings and thoughts are really important. We should to be careful with the kind of activity or homework we design, for that we have to consider student’s realities, student’s dispositions, classroom environment, etc. If we do not pay enough attention to those factors we can be the responsible of a depression, a scholar desertion or even worse a suicide. Teachers are working with people, with feelings, so with lives. That is why some people say that we (prospective teachers) are the future of our country…

Camila Gómez