Teaching the way I do – The Enhanced Version

In teaching, one of the most common message is that “everything seems to work”. It is hard to find teachers who say that they are “below average” teachers, and everyone (including parents, the ministry, middle managers, school leaders) has a reason why their particular view about teaching or improvements is likely to be successful. Indeed, the traditional way of teaching and learning (such as direct teaching) seems to justify “everything else” – myself included. I acknowledge that teachers teach differently from one another, one of the main reasons is due to beliefs and this is what is termed individual “teaching style” and I respect this difference. Another reason is termed “professional independence” and I see it as saying “I will leave you alone, if you leave me alone to teach my way.”

I observed during the Professional Learning Teams presentations, while teachers talk about improvements in curriculum and assessment – the “what works”; they rarely talk about their teaching practice – their explanation to their “what worked” teaching, the data, evidences they had collected. One reason may be that teachers find it hard to correlate the teaching to some of these causes. Another reason is that teachers prefer to believe that they may teach differently, but it should work regardless of how the teachers teach in their particular way. Moreover, teaching happens within their closed classroom wall, and so is rarely questioned.

We hear and seem to believe that most teachers demonstrate success, short of unethical behaviors and incompetence, and there is much support for the “everything goes” approach. However, I do think of some shortcomings and these happen when we have a change of new cohort of students.

Despite all the successes we have may had with this year’s cohort of students, teachers have to start again next year with a brand new cohort. The greatest change that most students experience is the level of competence of the teacher, as all else the environment and their peers are typically similar to what they would have experienced the previous year. And it is also surely as tempting for the teacher to re-do the successes of the previous years, to compare students in terms of last years’ cohort and to insist on an orderly progression through that which had worked before.

I believed that teachers are required to find their passion in their teaching every year – to treat the current cohort of students as if it is the first time that the teacher has taught a class – as it is for the first batch of students with this teacher. Teachers must identify and accommodate the difference brought with each new cohort of students. More importantly, teachers need to react to the learning as it occurs as every moment of learning is different for each cohort. This is how the art of teaching, and how the many successes is related to “what happens next” instead of the “what worked”. There are so many “what worked” successful solutions this year, but I believe that it is important to have some of evidence, especially for their continuation next year for the new cohort of students – enhancing the “what happens next”. In addition, teachers would then find support to justify their actions instead of the “smiley lack of confidence maybe will succeed” and so creating a culture of “just leave me alone to teach my way as I have evidence that what I do enhance learning of students”