9/23/2021; Week 02: Response to "Is the Great American Teacher Dead?"

This week I read an interesting article titled “Is the Great American Teacher Dead” by Dr. John J. Ivers. I would like to highlight two things mentioned there and why I think teachers should do them, in order to improve their teaching and have a truly positive impact on their students.

Deliveries

First, as Dr. Ivers told, teaching is like public speaking, if the speaker is not passionate about the topic and doesn’t speak with dynamism, it won’t matter how great the topic of his talk is, no one will pay attention. That happens in a classroom setting as well. We have all been in those uncomfortable situations, where we force ourselves to pay attention to the teacher, but his teaching is so passive that it seems like our efforts unnoticed. Teachers must instruct with passion, inspiration, and joy. It is OK to make a joke every now and then!

Dr. Ivers suggests a simple three-step formula to improve teaching deliveries:

1. As research shows, it is really important to catch students' attention at the beginning of the lessons. Teachers can do this by asking interesting questions, applicable stories, or thrilling facts!

2. Then, a teacher must strive to keep students' attention along the lesson. The Ten Minute Rule could be very useful here. This means that the teacher "needs to reboot the students’ attention every 10 minutes or so by inserting something interesting, exciting, or engaging into the lesson" (Medina, 2008).

3. Finally, teachers should provide opportunities for students to practice and review the content that has been learned.

Positive influence and relationship

Teachers should always keep in mind this key concept, they can be whether a positive life-long lasting influence on their students or negative.

A friend of mine told me about an experience when she was in kindergarten. She was at her PE class, and the teacher asked them to take deep breaths. She was with her friends, and they decided to hold their breaths to figure out who could hold it for a longer period. While she was trying to hold her breath as much as she could, the teacher approached and said something like this: "What do you think you are doing?! Do you think you are better than your peers?". And she continued saying similar comments that made her feel really bad. Nowadays, she still remembers that experience and she deals with similar feelings, which started back then when she was just a little girl.

I'm not saying that everybody will have the same experience, but I'm pretty sure that a lot of students have experienced similar humiliation. Teachers should always keep in mind how fragile are students' feelings and self-concept. Students will not learn if they feel stressed and insecure. Along with that, research has shown how feelings of shame and guilt can lead to heart diseases in the long-term.

By now, every student has enough negative beliefs (paradigm) about themselves, they don't need more. Teachers have the chance to help students change such paradigms and strengthen students' self-concept. They should encourage and congratulate them, help them feel comfortable and respected.

A teacher in a TESOL classroom could find particular challenges, for example: shy students when speaking English as a second language, lack of self-confidence, diversity of proficiency levels, students with bad attitudes towards English gotten from past experiences, etc.

Though there are several challenges, a teacher could make a hole of a difference if he/she works hard trying to become a better instructor, and these are the possible successes that I can imagine. Students with stronger self-concepts, increased self-confidence when speaking in English, increased proficiency levels, more positive attitudes towards English (it can be fun!), and so on.

Final questions

• Does the list of Dr. Ivers' ten most important elements in good teaching resemble to the attributes of your favorite teachers?

• How have those teachers transformed your world view as Dr. Ivers says?

Hopefully, by doing this, teachers can prove how the Great American Teacher, and not only in America, but in the whole world is not dead. While inspiring and positively impacting their students' lives.

Thanks for reading!

References:

• Ivers, J. J. (2012). Is the Great American Teacher Dead? Principles to Resurrect Meaningful, Effective, and Consciousness Raising Instruction. Journal of Invitational Theory and Practice, 18, 49-56.

• Medina, J. (2008). Brain rules. Seattle, WA: Pear Press.