“Teaching students to use their minds and hearts
well refers to schooling aimed at creating intellectual habits and high moral and ethical conduct that will
remain with them for the rest of their lives” (Krovetz & Arriaza, 2006, p.
53).
“I invite you to reflect back on how your stories
have shaped your teaching life. How can you ‘write’ new stories with your
students and colleagues, as you attempt to infuse elements of mythopoetic
inspiration in your teaching?” (Henderson et al., 2015, p. 134).
à Can
you share stories from your teaching practice about how your emotions
(positively or negatively) affected your teaching? And, in your opinion, how
can we as educators have our emotions guide us in good ways?
Hello everyone, my name is Moussa. I have a teacher in the suburbs of Rufisque city, Senegal for more than 7 years. Of course, I experienced different emotions through out my career. I will share with you one experience that I think it is unique because it made me feel different things. One time I observed that one of my students was cheating during the first written exam in that semester. I had to act quickly but I had to be careful not to humiliate the student in front of the other students. It was a difficult thing to do. I asked the student to come out of the classroom, then he started crying. I was so angry that he was cheating in my class, but after class I met with this student. He told me all about his problems at home. the boy lives in a village that's too far from the school. So every day he has to walk almost 10 kilometers to back and forth from his village to the school. His parents don't have money to pay for his books so he couldn't study for the test and asked one of his classmates to write him the answers. After I talked to him and explained to him that I will try to help him out by getting him the textbook he needed for my class. That night, I couldn't forget how much that boy cried and I could tell he was very genuine in his expression of his emotions and feelings. Fortunately, I had the money to make copies of the chapters that we had to study in that class. The next day when I went to class in the morning, that boy was the first in class. He told me that he was so excited to get the book , so he got up around 6 in the morning to come to school. I gave him the copies and he was still happy with them. He apologized and I could tell he was really happy. This made me feel happy and made me realize that as a teacher I have to think about the perspective of my students first. I should not be angry, but I should try to understand their reasons. Children are always guide by other reasons in their lives, so teachers need to control their emotions and try to communicate with their students by using positive emotions or emotions that create positive environment and positive feelings for their students.
ReplyDeleteSuch a heartfelt story, Moussa! Thanks and I can relate to that, having attended K-12 public schools in Morocco.
DeleteI also can relate to that. There are million other things that the teacher has to think about in this profession, not only teaching, and the students also have the same challenge, maybe even bigger challenges in their lives.
DeleteThats exactly correct. We have to think about millions of things at the same time we have to teach a lesson. Impressive!
DeleteIn my job, there are a lot of emotions. Sports and health education depend on emotions, and especially in competitions and I remember when I participated in different competitions, keeping calm was very important. In my teaching now, I try to keep calm and not get angry or frustrated. I feel like when I am calm I can do my job better and I can guide my student better. So, I think teachers should control their negative feelings and stay focus.
ReplyDeleteJeong,
DeleteIt's interesting that you believe emotions can govern how we behave and we guide our teaching practices. A lot of people would say that our decisions develop from logic and reason, but at the end of the day we, educators, are humans, and when we deal with others, emotions take over.
Mohsim,
DeleteThat's very true. Teaching is an emotional profession. In fact, there are many emotions that teacher can experience even in one day :)
I always think that being positive as a teacher will reflect on students' motivation toward learning. When you show your students your positive emotion when they make progress, it definitely will enhance their potential to become successful in every aspect of their lives. I remember myself when I started learning English. I had a strong desire to attend classes only because my teacher was very kind and supportive. It gave me a confidant that I would be able to learn English which eventually I became an English teacher. Meshari, KSA.
ReplyDeleteHello Mashari,
DeleteThanks for your valuable insight. I totally agree that inspirational educators can bring about tremendous change in their students' lives. The kindness and support you received from your English teacher is probably what motivated you to become a teacher (or at least had some influence) and still guide you in your teaching practice today. Thanks, again.
Greetings everyone. I have been through such a teaching experience in intermediate school settings. Although it was a bit short, but it was full of benefits and surprises. Talking about using stories as an inspirational tool in teaching kids, I would definitely agree on that. Having tried telling or making up stories was found the best solution in such cases. People have emotions and are affected by others talk either positively or the other way. Talking form an experience, I always used to use stories as part of my teaching. I found it effective, especially to the first grades. They came to love my stories even though some of them were made up. I used to make up stories when needed. For such cases of seeing something not appropriate, I would use stories indirectly as an advice. Therefore, that worked really well for me and the kids. Frankly, I would say that anyone gets excited for and inspired by stories. That is to say that stories positively effective in teaching. They warm up for the lesson to be given, make students feel excited in every class, and make students like to be part of the class. To sum up, stories are all along exciting, helpful, and fun.
ReplyDeleteFahd, SA
Fahd,
DeleteThanks for your input. I'm glad to hear that your students find story-telling exciting.
Frankly I can relate to many stories here. Before I started teaching in the city, I taught for four years in rural areas and the students in those areas come from humble and uneducated backgrounds. So simply they don't get a lot of help from their families. Some students have to help the family business (males) or help with the household chores (females) and at the same time they have to go to school. Usually studying is a secondary purpose to the majority of these students and their families, but of course there are some exceptions. For example, I had a girl student who had to help with tough agricultural work, and at the same time she had to study. Being the eldest child, she had to help her mother with the housework and help her farmer father with his work, and she was told that if she wanted to continue going to school, she had to do her housework and help her father first. This strong girl was my student, but she was also a good inspiration for me and for her classmates. she worked so hard in whatever she did, and I always tell her story to my city students who most of them are usually spoiled and lazy.
ReplyDeleteMariam,
DeleteThank you for sharing this inspirational story. This story is very moving and it provides us - teachers- with motivation to work hard and improve our teaching practices to provide good education especially for those kinds of students who struggle everyday in their lives to get school.
Yes, there are privileged students who receive great education and who also do very well at school and eventaully in their lives. But there are also those students who struggle every single day and the question is teachers can only do so much. At times, we find ourselves helpless because we can not help these underprivileged, struggling kids, and that my friends is a horrible, terrible feeling.
DeleteThat is why as teachers we ought to be compassionate and resilient. Compassion allows us to try to understand what others have to deal with, yet resilience allows us to bounce back and keep going. Surgeons cannot save all of their patients. While they feel deep sadness when they try hard but fail, they have to pull through and go back to baseline to be able to help other patients.
DeleteMohcine: that's really a nice analogy. however, many times compassionate teachers get tired of feeling that way. you feel the pain of others and when you can not help, it really drains you emotionally. this is even worse when the students who need help don't even want to help themselves, so what happens you give up especially if youve been working for many years.
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ReplyDelete