Protect Teachers’ Passion To Teach
Instead of only protecting students’ passion to learn
Backstory
I have been an unhappy student throughout my high school days. I thought high school education was boring. I didn’t think I was a bad student, though. I was a very curious being that wanted to get to the bottom of everything that crossed paths with my thoughts. However, I think being in school didn’t help me find those answers, at least not as much as I would have liked. I was a huge fan of Steve Jobs and reading his stories about being a rebellious, mischievous kid made me feel a sense of belonging. Even though I did not act out like he did, the sentiment of the school being a boring place, instead of the interesting place for learning it should be was shared between me and childhood Steve.
Much like Steve Job’s dad, I blamed the school. I blamed teachers for not making school subjects interesting. I blamed them for killing students’ motivation and passion to learn. Enthusiasm to understand the nature of certain topics always end up being swallowed up by the need to memorize not-well-explained formulas to solve test questions and ace exams. I blamed the teachers for that, even though it is not their fault for the most part. I thought it was a right for every student to have his or her noble passion to learn (if present) be met with education of worthy quality.
Now I am 20 years old, and looking back I still think high school was a place that killed the curiosity and genuine desire to learn of many, and even though teachers weren’t entirely at fault, they were still the most obvious targets if you really want to blame anybody.
The question that led to realization.
But I thought of another question, and this is the question that made me think a lot more about this, since blaming teachers for boring the heck out of students is nothing new at all.
“If teachers are tasked to protect students’ passion to learn, who is tasked to protect teachers’ passion to teach?”
Teachers teach the same topic over and over again year after year. They teach the same class to different batches of students, articulating the same concept in a similar manner time after time. It is a highly repetitive job. Even if it is not the teachers’ intent, after teaching something 100 times your brains learn to only deliver the essential information to reach the end goal (have students be able to answer test questions) and leave out what is unnecessary. It is hard to be really passionate about a topic that you have articulated tens or hundreds of times over, or at least hard to maintain that same level of passion and enthusiasm. But what can be done? This is expected of being a teacher. This has always been what the role of a school teacher entails. We would rarely ever think of an alternative way the teachers’ role can be filled since this has been how we do things for the longest of times.
Video Classes
The Covid-19 pandemic put video classes into the eyes of the public, and everybody is forced to adapt to this change despite all the cons you can rant about it. But isn’t this the perfect opportunity forward?
If you could record your lecture once, and let all your students now, and in the future watch the same lectures about the same topic, why not?
I think traditional education should look towards the winners of online education. Platforms like Skillshare, Udemy, and even Masterclass are doing a great job at delivery knowledge online. You put all your effort into producing your lectures once, and anybody who wants to learn can watch them as much as they like. This is a model traditional education can adopt.
Traditional Education Reform
Here is how I imagine traditional education can be delivered.
Teachers produce lectures, and tutorial videos once, and these videos can be accessed to all students that enroll in such classes. Instead of having the teacher go in the classroom to teach the repetitive stuff, we let the students watch the video content, either collectively or in their own time.
The teachers’ role is to answer students’ questions, and supervise them when they attempt to solve problems and test questions, and be their advisor for group projects. This is the non-repetitive stuff. Everyday the teacher would face very different situations and the teachers’ job everyday is different, fresh.
Great for teachers, and for students.
Benefits of Video Classes
If you were a teacher, wouldn’t you be more likely to give more effort if you know you were only going to be teaching something once? Wouldn’t you be more motivated or incentivized to ensure the quality meets your highest standards or at least close to that? The thought of “I’ll be teaching this again in three other classrooms, what a drag,” has zero chance of existence.
The great thing about video classes? When the teacher wants to update his or her class, he or she can simply record a new section to replace the old one, or add it into the video catalog as additional material.
As a student, I have ran into situations when I wish there were more examples, more use-cases, and more real world applications that the teacher could explore in class. With video classes, the teacher can easily record short sessions diving deep into certain topics and theses can added it into the catalog of video lectures.
The benefits of on-demand video content can easily be an entire book by itself, including the ability to be watched whenever, and wherever. Some people learn fast, some people learn slow, let everybody take their own time.
Going back to passion
Having this change makes the teachers’ job a whole lot different. The teachers’ job involved teaching in classes the majority of the time. By emptying up that time the teacher can spend a lot more time solving students’ problems and meeting specific students’ needs.
By protecting the teachers’ passion to teach we are also protecting the students’ passion to learn. A passionate student becomes boring when met by a boring teacher. But a passionate teacher might be able to bring the passion out of even the most boring of students.
Conclusion
It’s time we look into the great things the world of technological advancement has opened up to the everyday individual, and take advantage of such powers we are granted to make education better, for both teachers and students. We all have the ability to make our own high quality films, the ability to publish content to anybody we want, whether that means a specific group of people or the entire world — we have the power to do that. Make teachers’ jobs less boring, so they be less boring.
Teachers are important, protect their passion to teach. And I want to mention that I am not suggesting teachers’ all do not have the passion to teach if we leave things as it is now, but if we could make it more likely for a teacher to keep the passion going, why not?
Just because something isn’t broken doesn’t mean we can’t make an effort to make it even better.
