On Teaching

On Teaching....

Teaching is all about preparation. A true teacher will be able to to teach just about any subject if his/her preparation was done properly.
I say just about any subject because in my humble opinion there is only one true specialized subject, mathematics.
For a mathematics teacher to be successful, he/she must not only understand the subject matter but must be able to communicate it in an understandable language to the learners, this is a skills that very few people have.
Many people understand a subject but they find it difficult in communicating and explaining it to the learners, and the reason for that is that they forgot, or were never introduced to the first rule of teaching....learning takes place from the known to the unknown.
This is where a teacher should focus when developing a lesson plan, yes you heard me correctly, the teacher must develop his/her own lesson plans. Why do you ask?, well it is simple even if you have two classes in the same grade, and for the same subject, the lesson plans for the classes would (and in most cases should) be different because no two learners, not even to speak about classes are the same.
Teachers should know their learners, what is their background, what is their frame of reference, what knowledge do they already have, what is their prejudices, what is their cultural background, what is their understanding of the "teaching language", and what is their life experiences. Only when a teacher understands the learners, the subject matter and the message that must be conveyed, can the focus move to the how.
As a young teacher the biggest mistake I made was to develop a single lesson plan and then I tried to apply the lesson plan to all my classes, and then could not understand for the live of me why the results were so much different. It was only later when I realized that just like people, classes are all different, each class has its own "personality" and as a teacher I had to adapt to their "personality".
Many learners and parents have come to me over the years asking me the relevance of a subject, I am sure that either you were on the receiving or giving end of the following; "why do we need to know this", "why do we need to do this" or my favourite, "I will never use this again in my life".
The moment someone comes with one of these statements I truly fell sorry for them because it means that a teacher failed them somewhere. These questions arise when teachers have an attitude that their subject is the best and that no other subject exists.
Rather than having that attitude teachers should make the link between all the subjects in the curriculum and show learners that all the subjects are somehow integrated, that what you learn in one subject can assist you in another.
A simple example is geography and maths. Learners in geography must be able to calculate distance, direction, what else is that than maths?, or how a comprehension test helps you to study. By making these links for learners I found that they immediately see the whole picture instead of just focusing on the subject at hand.
Teachers must remember that we operate in a dynamic environment, information and fact changes daily and we have to be on top of it. Something that was fact yesterday, can be proven wrong today.
Learners must be taught to listen, question, read and reason. If we fail to do this we will create individuals that will follow blindly and believe everything they are told.
So, as a teacher you have the responsibility towards society to develop young and mature minds that not only understands their environment, but can also observe, analyse and identify issues and mistakes. Minds that will be able to rectify situations through mature dialogue, minds that will take their responsibility of universal adult suffrage serious and who will not be intimidated by populist views.

Till next time...

The Wall