Innovative Teaching: Teaching at Its Best

Fostering Reflection And Repose It is interesting to observe how diverse teachers struggle daily to excel as they try to discover which educational strategies are the most successful and which mistakes the most common. We must acknowledge the contributions of a teacher's personality, humour, dedication, passion, and ability to compromise within the classroom, and assert that such contributions be recognized in the teaching profession. Synergy between the Teacher and the Student Great teaching demands a kind of a synergy unlike that between the boss and the staff. It is a synergy that develops over time between the teacher and the student. Coaching students, prompting them to be tough questioners, offering them respect, and assisting in the development of their self-esteem repeatedly produce the best results. According to Sizer (1985), reflection and repose are qualities which educational systems should seek to foster, not punishment. Education should cultivate rigid self-discipline and strong inner balance. For this to happen, teachers must assist students in their on-going push toward self-improvement. Paradoxically, the best and worst of teaching skills are integrally related to the gifts and flaws embedded in a teacher's personality. Teachers often have to struggle to overcome their anger, prejudice, sloth, and despair. However, if teachers have an abiding concern for their students' total welfare and a worried concern for some of their ailing, troubled students, they will not just leave their students in the classroom but continually labor to understand how familial and societal influences have shaped them and ultimately develop the synergy between them. Giving Meaning to the Students' Struggle A teacher's view is broadened by his or her struggle to overcome the conditions which impose on both teachers and students. When students get bored with one-sided presentations, teachers should not come to a stand still. They should give students a chance to voice their views and then reward them for their openness. In this way, the curriculum broadens as students enjoy what is being taught and teachers thrive in a potpourri of ideas. It is this construction of vivid moments of exchange, where students and teachers can form a bridge of communication, that is vital to teaching success. These moments occur with their greatest intensity when teachers willingly stretch themselves a bit further by working with students on the roots of their problems. However, even a charismatic and effective teacher who is caught within an educational system which does not offer conducive conditions where he or she can teach most effectively is forced to make a compromise. Teachers who work long hours such as over 60 hours per week are only able to allot five minutes per student's piece of writing samples submitted to them, even by working conscientiously. This is one socially conditioned limitation no teachers like to experience By detailing the rewards, frustrations, and contradictions that teachers experience, one can provide a commentary on how the conformity imposed by the educational codes can be challenged. There is the pivotal but almost unnameable quality of the vitality of a teacher's caring, and good teaching consists of knowledgeability, energy, clarity, and empathy. The teacher can work most effectively when students' minds are encouraged to expand, to push past conformity and prejudice, and to explore their own potential. Schools should never be regarded as anything which resembles a prison or factory, nor should teachers be asked to function as if guards or supervisors. Since there is little joy in accurate regurgitation, students need to be guided to find their own level of potential accomplishment. If students have to struggle through the curriculum, as a lot of them really do, the least teachers can do is to give meaning to the students' struggle. …