Teachers
What
it implies to be a teaching professional
By María José Mesén-Molina
Pre-Service Teacher, School of English
Faculty of Social Sciences
Universidad Latina de Costa Rica
Tuesday, March 8, 2016
Post 232
For this first chapter on Teachers from Harmer’s (2007) book, How to Teach English, I had to analyze and define what a
teacher is. According to Harmer (2007), a teaching professional can either be
born or they can be made, and consequently, it can be stated that there
are no set of rules that we have to follow to become a great teacher because instructors
can be successful in many different ways.
Teachers are very versatile individuals who must have a solid personality,
be adaptable and also have the capability to manage different roles in the
classroom. Having these traits makes being a teacher a little bit easier.
However, besides those characteristics, instructors have to complete tasks,
have skills and be knowledgeable. In other words, teachers are superheroes. In the classroom the number one client the
teacher has is his/her students and to keep them happy, we teaching
professionals should be able to build healthy teacher/student relationships
(rapport) by being fair with them, respecting them and -of course- recognizing
each and every one of them. Before setting foot in the classroom though,
teachers must first prepare their class, set up a record system and learn how
to be reliable. Once they set foot in the classroom teachers must have a set of
skills and have knowledge of certain tools to make the lesson flow easily.
Amongst the skills they must know how to manage a class, successfully match
tasks with its appropriate groups, have variety in the activities and
understand clearly the destination the students have when it comes to learning
English. Some of the tools that teachers must know how to use is the language
system, normal day to day resources such as dictionaries, typical classroom
equipment like the projector and pod-casts and -of course- being up-to-date on
the latest teaching systems by going to conferences.
Harmer’s (2007) chapter on Teachers -as a whole- was very informative and made me
reflect on areas I have achieved and areas that still have room for
improvement. Areas I need to improve on is my range and variety in activities
and having a clear understanding of my students’ destination in the long run
and not just in a short-term future.
The part of Harmer’s (2007) chapter I
did not fully understand that well was regarding the personality of the
instructors. I understood the essence of the topic, but I was not able to take
away a clearer message that left an impact on me in regards to an effective
teacher personality. Besides this, the chapter is a great tool to reflect
on and can be seen as a checklist to confirm areas of improvement for teachers
that have years of experience but also new teachers that need to know areas
they can work on before setting foot in the classroom. I am not sure if
I would recommend it whole-heartily; however, as mentioned before, it could be
used as a reference.
Bibliography
Harmer, J. (2007). "Teachers." How to
Teach English. Essex: Pearson.
Taken from http://p5cdn2static.sharpschool.com/common/resources/images/Cliparts/Teachers/Apple.png
Tuesday, March 08, 2016
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