Describing Teachers

 Hi again! Welcome back to a new entry! Today we´re going to talk about teachers, yes! teachers and their amazing job and characteristics.

We all have our perceptions about teachers. In my case, before our class, I described teachers as good public speakers,  popular and active or dynamic people in the classroom, and of course very patient and advocate professionals. 💫This is true but we can also describe teachers in a more pedagogical way, based on different criteria that might sound a little more technical than the one we used to describe students but, no worries, we´ll go through it in a moment! 😊

Teachers are described for their role in the classroom, as an organizer, performers, their rapport with students, as for being teaching aids, and as native and non-native speakers.

1. Teacher´s role in the classroom: sometimes one might believe that a teacher´s role is to teach a class, but it goes beyond. Teachers in a classroom act as:

• Controllers: they have to lead activities from the front.
• Prompters: when students forget, a word, a due day for an activity, or instructions, teachers are a helping hand and a reminder.
• Participants: teachers also have to take active roles, I remember my teachers with who the class had a better rapport, would take active roles even in break times and dynamics.
• Resource: when asked for help, teachers assist. For example, when students don´t know the meaning of a word.
• Tutors: they give feedback and sometimes personalized help.

2. The teacher as an organizer: I once heard that teachers´ time in a classroom is just 10% of the time they actually spend working, there´s a lot of planning that people don't see, and teaching a lesson is just the tip of the iceberg. My mom is an English teacher and I notice how hard she works to do great in front of her class. Teachers are always thinking about the activities they will carry out in the upcoming sessions, they also spend time reflecting on many things before the class, during the class, and after the development of the activities.

3. Teachers as performers: teachers are actors and actresses because depending on the activity they are developing that´s how they need to behave. For instance, if they are carrying out a team game, they have to perform in an energetic, encouraging, and fair way. On the other hand, if they are developing a reading out loud activity, they have to act commanding, interestingly and perhaps a little dramatically to illustrate better. what they´re reading. So, activities shape teachers´ behavior.

4. Rapport: rapport means the student-teacher relationship, that “magical connection”. When students get along with teachers that means a good rapport, whereas if this relationship is conflictive, indifferent, or apathetic that means they have a negative rapport.

Even if there is a little bit of inexplicability in this, or it happens to be somehow magical, some suggestions to achieve good rapport with students are: recognizing students, their names, character, and preferences, listening to them, respecting them, especially when correcting mistakes, and being even-handed, that means treating all students equally.

5. Teacher as a teaching aid: Body language and modeling pronunciation are key for learners; teachers convey meaning through their expressions and mimicry. That´s the answer to why English teachers move around a lot and use gestures to indicate for instance, past time, future, how tall, big, or small something is.

6. Native vs non-native English speaker teachers: I think there is an idea that native English speakers are the only ones who can effectively teach a language, but we shouldn’t underestimate non-native teachers. Instead, let´s focus on each one´s strengths. On the one hand, native teachers can be more linguistically confident and have more cultural knowledge, while on the other hand, non-native speakers can have a better understanding of students´ struggles when learning the language, they already learned.   

 

I really enjoyed this lesson; I had no clue that we could describe teachers in such a precise and professional way. I only knew that you can really tell when teachers love what they do, and they never go unnoticed, I have a deep appreciation for the great teachers I have had in my life, and they all have in common their passion for teaching, I love how you teachers do inside and outside a classroom, you have truly impacted us in a positive way, and that should be said more often. 💫💓

That was it for today teacher, stay tuned, and see you next time! 👋😊

 Bye bye!