Teachers are people too. We all have different strengths, weaknesses, and needs. Learning can be a difficult, sometimes lonely, experience. To help teachers better understand what they can do for their students, here’s a message to send to them on teachers day.
One of the biggest things teachers can do for students is to offer support. But many teachers find it too easy to just say “Go get it.” Many teachers feel that if they just let people know how useful they are, it will take them long enough to get something out of them. But saying that you’re a teacher doesn’t make you a teacher.
Teachers are often misunderstood as if theyre a one-person club. Theyre not. Teachers are a group of people who, for example, teach kids things like science or math. Then they teach those same students how to be effective teachers. Theres also a teaching aspect to teaching, of course. But that’s another place teachers are misunderstood, and that’s where this is helpful. It helps teachers to realize that sometimes, they can offer so much more than just “get it.
There are so many ways that a teacher can offer so much more than just get it. Think, for example, of a teacher offering a full day of classes in chemistry. When I teach chemistry, I try to teach it in a way that will help my students understand and use chemistry the way it is meant to be used—as a way to make money, not a way to make a quick buck. To teach chemistry one way doesn’t make you a teacher.
Teachers need to be aware of all the ways that they can be the most useful to students and the most helpful to their students. If a teacher isnt teaching chemistry, then that teacher is failing in their job. There needs to be a balance between offering what they know that the students need and offering what they can offer the students.
Teachers dont know everything and shouldnt be seen as experts. When I was in school we got a lot of respect for the teachers who were in charge of a science class. We were mostly good at the science, but we also had a lot of the students go to class, and at the end of the day we were the teachers, and they were the students. We were the ones teaching the students, and we were the ones that they were learning from.
This message was delivered to me by a teacher and it is a great message about how we shouldn’t be seen as experts. We always had to be on top of things, and that shouldn’t change. We need to always be on top of everything we teach our students and our students need to always be on top of everything.
Well said, but I still think it’s a great message and I’m glad that this teacher was able to share it with us.