Line Dalile – Invest in Teachers and The Art of Teaching Student Voice
Student Voice:
by admin
Let us redefine the word “Teacher”.
Teaching is not a job; it is an art. An art hidden behind a load of responsibilities. It lays the foundation of discovering mysteries, solving problems, and training our minds to question, explore, and investigate. To a world where knowledge is a treasure, teaching is a mirror that reflects future generations.
You can see that teaching is not an easy task. It is, in fact, a multi-task where a teacher has to combine creativity, intelligence, and passion when teaching productively, because after all, everything is a product of teaching. Teachers are the agents of the future fueling students with lifelong passion for learning.
But it is a matter of how we define the word “Teacher” in today’s society. Some think of a 50 year-old teaching materials than no one can digest, a 14 year-old teaching students her age, or a guy changing the world one video at a time. Others imagine the wisdom of Confucius, Socrates, and Anne Sullivan.
As I come to define the word “teacher”, I often look up how it’s perceived by societies, countries, and dictionaries. For centuries, we have thought of teachers as pots of knowledge pouring information in the brains of students. To Merriam Webster dictionary: A teacher is one that teaches; especially: one whose occupation is to instruct. Interestingly, in the Chinese language, a teacher is called 劳师, or old master. But to a fallow mind, a teacher is a planter of seeds, a precious thought that flourishes our path. To a wanderer with lost hope, a teacher is guide. To a creative mind, a teacher is a Muse, an inspiration, an idea. Put simply by the words of Gerlad Grow: “To a mind of flint, the teacher must be iron that strike sparks.” All around the world, nations are trying to improve the performance of their education system and schools, but with creating more standardized tests, the future doesn’t look bright. To boost the performance of our schools, we need to invest in teachers. According to an article written in 2009, Invest in teachers to raise achievement, “Children in classes taught by the best teachers learn four times faster than those in classes taught by the poorest ones.” Professor Dylan William of the Institute of Education, London says
