The Empathy
When it comes to teaching and being a class facilitator, I’ve realized that I haven’t shown enough empathy to my students. As a teacher I have the tendency to speak fast and assume that the students have no problems following my thoughts.
Wrong. Some are often lost and out-of-focus, and when I do stumble upon these students, I get upset and think that this is their problem, not mine.
A reminder to myself: It’s okay to slow down. Better to spend more time and making sure everyone understand as well as making sure that they read the lessons ahead before they are being discussed, rather than wasting time telling the students off for not listening.
My other weakness is giving instructions – I often forget that different people think differently. Most of the time, because of the time limit and the amount of lessons I have to cover, I belittle the importance of giving actual example of the task in which I want my students to do. I tend to think that verbal instruction is sufficient and that everyone understands – which might work on a Lower Intermediate class, but will definitely fail on an Elementary level class. Even on some cases, I find that giving actual examples by putting myself as a part of the role actually makes a significant amount of difference in both levels.
A reminder to myself: Show them how it’s done exactly so they know exactly what I expect of them. There’s really no other way to do it. This will eliminate students from interpreting things differently and doing unwanted improvisations that again, might result in me getting frustrated for not achieving the target.
To sum it up nicely, my biggest problem when teaching is probably patience. This, I don’t have enough. I don’t like wasting time and I simply can’t afford to; especially when there are twenty students needing my undivided attention and for me to identify each of their strength and weaknesses so I can find out ways to help them. Individually.
I hope I can remind myself to try to put myself in their shoes and think; If I were them, would I hate the teacher? Would I agree with the way she teaches? What could I do better?
3 comments
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therry! u write again!! kyaaaa!
anyway I believe u are a great teacher, coz u always care of ur students
Good think for you, somebody must think about students:)