In this short reflection of ours, we are not going to write about the characteristics of a good teacher; we will do this separately. Here, we will try only to defend the student's right to have a good teacher.
Every student deserves a good teacher who will make him want to fly.
Education is a two-sided process - teaching and learning. There should be an equal effort and an equally honest attitude towards the process in order to achieve something.
Teachers are the most important people in schools. Together with the students, they create the image of education. But if the students still have a more dependent role, the teachers' role is the leading one. The quality of teaching and learning depends on the teachers. And although there are plenty of brilliant professionals in schools, and they make up maybe 90% of the teachers, there is still a percentage of teachers who are simply not fit for the role.
The role of the teacher is extremely demanding and challenging but, on the other hand, extremely rewarding. The teacher should not only be a brilliant expert in their subject but also a great communicator and a big fan of the students. To be a teacher means that you have a passion and love in your heart for the students. To be a good teacher means that you will always do what is right for the students, no matter how hard this is for you. It means that you have almost angelic patience. You will need a lot of patience.
Teachers create the students' memories, and the care for the students' well-being and learning should always come first. All that means that you have to embrace in your heart the philosophy of Humane Pedagogy, not the philosophy of Authoritarian Pedagogy.
At the heart of the learning process is communication. Actually, it is better to say that the learning process happens through communication. The teacher communicates, in a humane way, the subject knowledge but also builds the relationship in the classroom, which should be full of mutual friendly respect. The improvement of the relationship does not depend on the subject content. Not at all. It is something that requires attention and requires us to put the students' personalities and their importance in the learning process at the centre in a natural, humane way, not an authoritarian one.
Many other factors can help to improve the atmosphere in the classroom, and they could be great boosters for the students' motivation to learn. The teacher has to use everything that could inspire the students to work hard and achieve results. Good examples of people from different professions who have achieved something, examples from the different arts, music, and, of course, contact with nature could all be very successful tools to lift students' spirits and make them want to achieve something.
All this is included in the image of a good teacher. That's why teachers are so important. Students usually mirror the teacher in many ways - they copy the attitude to work and the level of ambition.
The biggest problem in education is not the underachieving children.
No, they are not, because they are on a learning journey. They have a chance to develop themselves.
The percentages for progress are still just numbers, and no number is able to capture and embrace the full potential of a child; it usually reflects only a temporary state of it.
The biggest problem in education is the underachieving teachers. People who are not really sure why their lives ended up in the classroom. People who became teachers only because it looked like an easy job and there were no better options around.
The underachieving teachers are those who have come to the field of education for their own reasons, in which children and their learning and development were usually not even on their list of priorities.
The underachieving teachers see children only as numbers and percentages, nailed down forever.
They are blind to potential and its development. In fact, they kill potential, and some of them do not even know how to develop the students' potential. They do not care about students' motivation, nor are they looking for ways to inspire the learners.
The underachieving teachers do not believe in the boundless potential of the students. They see the students only as objects of constant criticism, punishment, shouting and mental harassment, but not as individuals.
When we talk about rude, less literate and ignorant children today, we must not forget that this is also due to the authoritarian-command methods of underachieving teachers. The other reason is the lack of loving and inspirational adults around them.
The specificity of the teaching profession is that it is a very delicate profession because it is not only about the subject but also about the dialogue with the children, which has equal importance in the learning process.
This whole negative attack on students is inadmissible. It is not only unconstructive, but it also gives birth to the same attitude on the other side, and we cultivate aggression through our own aggression towards them.
We leave an imprint on students' souls; we give them role models.
Because it is fair to remember that every medal has two sides and it is not possible that only the weaker party is always to blame simply because it cannot defend itself against the unbearable criticism and punishment of the adults. Children are the defenceless side in the educational dialogue. They believe that we are making the right choices for them.
Children are a new, pure energy that needs a pure and honest attitude. This, however, is the most difficult because it means that adults need to change completely. You cannot educate new people with old pedagogy. You cannot educate free individuals with authoritarian-command pedagogy.
In the classroom, we need warmth, love and respect so that we can achieve results - moral and educational.
It is so much easier to say that students do not achieve results because they do not have the ability. It is easy to say this, but is it fair? Because even if not every student can achieve brilliant results in every subject, every student can learn, and this should be the main starting point. Every student can learn; it is something natural to us as human beings. And every student has his own pace of learning, and the teacher should bear this in mind.
The underachieving teacher produces underachieving students without ambition and with a problematic attitude towards learning. A good teacher makes students love the subject.
Every student deserves a good teacher who will teach him how to fly.
(Elena S. Lyubenova)
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