The following is excerpted from the book Myths: Fact and Fiction about Teaching and Learning by Israel Galindo. How well do you know fact from fiction?
MYTH: Anybody can teach. Teaching is just communicating information, through effective verbal and instructional communication, skills that anybody can learn and master.
TRUTH: While it is true that a part of teaching involves the effective communication of information (knowledge), that is a very small part of what teaching is all about—and probably not the most important. Teaching, at heart, is primarily relational, it more than a meeting of minds, it is a transactional process between persons. Teaching is more than sharing information-it is about inspiring, motivating, awakening, challenging, and creating.
Someone said, “A student is not a glass to be filled, but rather a lamp to be lit.” Teaching skills can be learned, even mastered. And good teachers try to be masters at their craft. But real teachers don’t teach lessons, they teach people. A teacher reaches beyond the surface of instilling ideas to cultivate dreams within students, and, in so doing touches the future. Real teachers don’t just try to create smarter students; they nurture the development of better persons. In a real sense, the best teachers aren’t made, they are called. You can always tell who the “real†teachers are—they never stop teaching, they do so with a passion, and they invest themselves in the lives of their students.
You can order a copy of the book Myth: Fact and Fiction about Teaching and Learning by Israel Galindo (ISBN 0-9715765-4-8) directly from Educational Consultants.
I am glad you mentioned how teaching is relational. I was an elementary school teacher for six years. I had to take leave and found a job, at all places, a bank. I was the Customer Relations Manager for one of the branches in my hometown. How did I get the job, especially coming from an elementary background? They recognized the skills that it takes to relate to a class of 25 individuals, their individual parents/guardians, and all the teachers and principals in between. They said they could not find anyone more qualifed to work in Customer Relations. After a year, I was promoted to the Training Dept where I trained everyone who was coming into customer relations, on every level.
I would get so mad at people who would recite to me: “those who can – do. those who can’t – teach”. That is so not true. You have to be special to be a teacher. I hate to admit this, even though I know that teachers deserve a six figure income, I will be scared to death if that were to ever happen. People who are called to teach, are definitely not concerned with what they get paid. If income were not a factor, I can imagine that many “uncalled” people would try to teach, thinking of all the perks – summer breaks, two week holiday vacations, spring break vacations, leave the office at 3:00, etc…what a cushy job. That’s not what teaching is about.