An Inspired Teacher.

Thursday, 19 July 2012

An Inspired Teacher.

Julia Weber, a single-teacher school teacher in the United States. She proved that inspiration and enthusiasm of a single teacher can make huge differences. Having the best infrastructure does not mean quality in education. A teacher who is continuously innovating, reflecting and acting plays a key role in achieving quality education. 

Using locally available resources is very important and effective in teaching. If the local community is thoughtfully involved in the schooling processes, most resources needed for learning can be easily organized. Currently, in most schools, irrespective of the management, the community is kept either out or they are only involved in a unproductive manner. Most places the community is not aware of what is happening in the schools. The schools are seen as building where something is taught, and this ‘something‘ is not known by the community.

The idea of peer group learning is an effective way of learning where children of different ages and abilities are put together and they learn and teach each other, teacher here plays the role of a facilitator. In the Weber school, the children are mixed and different age group children study in the same class. The resources for learning were collected from the community. The importance of school libraries was also discussed. In many of the schools the library remains locked and the children have no access to them.

The importance of making the children aware about their community is discussed. The history and the living of the respective community should be known to the children. The importance of a teacher being a multi-talented person is discussed in the literature. Weber, even though was not expert in many fields she had awareness about diverse areas. A teacher should be an agent of different streams.  A teacher should know the relevance of what h/she teaches in the school with that of the real life. Always the real life and life situations should be portrayed before the children for effective learning as well as utilization of the knowledge they have.

The importance of child doing things by him/ her is a very important aspect of education. This would help improve the creativity as well as the experience of the child. Experience is something which becomes knowledge. The child should be given opportunities to work by himself/herself.

The realization that child as an individual is very important. They are not at all different. They have their own intellect, emotions and understanding. We should always respect them and try to recognize what they need and what they know.  

The environment where the child lives is where she learns most of what she wants. Hence,  environment of a child is directly linked to the growth of the child. A teacher has role in positively manipulating this environment so that a learner can extract meaning, understand and implications for herself.