Sunday, February 26, 2012

Inspire Your Students


"Why do we teach?" It was the first sentence I read from the first chapter: "Inspire Your Students" of the book: "Transformational Teaching." The first thing I did inmediately after reading that question was asking myself the reason for which I would like to teach, and my answer was that I want to help others to find their own way in this life, a way that guide them for the right track. I want to help students to believe that they are somene in this life and that they will become someone even more important some day if they go on the correct way. But I haven´t taken into account some important things that the chapter mentions about how to achieve what I want to reach together with my future students. 
The chapter focuses on three important aspects in any student in this life, which are social, academic, and also religious aspects. It is interesting to read about the experiences of some teachers who are citated in the chapter, all of whom lived a different experience trying to enlighten their students to the right way through those aspects or areas.When I read the complete chapter I was so excited that I read it again, and I discovered some other things I haven´t discovered the first time I read it. For example, I discovered that teachers have to be as a candle that consumes himself or herself to illuminate the way of his or her students, and I also discovered tha teachers are the responsibles of the reputation of a school, not the students because they do what the teachers teach to them. When I read the part that was referred to that I said "that´s  not true because students also have the influence of their parents," but then when I read about how some teachers had changed the mind of some of their students who had familiar problems in the capter, I realized that the teacher can be as influent as the parents of his or her students. Teachers not only have to be facilitators or helpers to their students, but also they have to be inspirers an illuminators as the book presents. One of the parts that really caught my attention was the part in which it mentioned that emotions affect our learning; that´s why, we all remember the things we feel, and it citates some examples as the 9/11 (September 11, 2001), or the election of Obama, and some other feelings we have that we can remember as if it would have happened yesterday.



 
Finally there was another term that caught my attention, it was the term SYNERGY, what we could call the effect that create the community between to people or more. The chapter gave crucial importance to the three aspects I mentioned before (social, academic, and religious), but it also focuses a lot in the synergy because it mentions that the dynamic student-teacher has to be very closer and special since that is the only form in which the student will feel that the teacher cares about him or her. To tell the truth, it was nice to have read that interesting chapter, so I feel privileged of having read it and of having learned from it.