Teach English in Guoyingzhongzhou Nongchang - Xiaogan Shi

In the language classroom, there are many roles that a teacher should be able to play in order to be well-rounded. In different situations and problems, a teacher will need to change his/her roles in order to compliment the matter or to solve the conflicts. I would like to discuss a few roles that a teacher would need to play in a classroom: Entertainer, motivator, and leader/manager. Holding student’s attention could be the most important element to have effective lesson. One way to capture the attention from the students is to act as an entertainer. In my personal experience while learning Spanish, one teacher stood out to me because he was an amazing entertainer. He has a second job as an actor, so he was able to act the subject or the meaning of the vocabulary without speaking any words. With his acting skill, he was able to make the learning environment relaxed and capture the students’ attention at the same time. This experience made a very profound impact in my learning process. I could memorize many vocabularies vividly by the way he portraited them in the classroom even after I did not attend class in a while. As a good entertainer, it immediately builds good relationship with students and allow them to feel comfortable during the lesson. He also uses friendly body language and smiles throughout the whole class. Confidence is the key element of learning anything in life. To have effective lessons, student must feel confidence during his or her journey of learning the process. A teacher must identify student’s strength and weakness then plan methods to build their confidence carefully. Regarding to student’s background, the confidence could vary tremendously. To generate more confidence, the teacher will need to take on the role of a motivator. In my personal teaching experience, compliment and encouragement should be offered often to students while they perform well or answer correctly. Motivation speech should be used in the proper time. As I came from an Asian background, many students have low confidence in speaking and are afraid in making mistakes. One reason is because some education system in Asian countries still use negative reinforcement such as punishment to “teach” children. It does not just negatively affect student’s confidence, but it also brings poor relationship between teachers and the students. As my personal experience teaching in Asia, it is important to have high approachability and low authoritative position as a teacher because it encourages the student to ask and rebuild trust. A teacher needs to manage the classroom well to create effective learning environment. In this context, a teacher becomes the manager or the leader of the classroom. To be a good leader, the teacher needs to be proactive, empathic, and goal oriented. Teacher needs to think ahead to satisfy the students’ need, therefore it is very important to recognize student’s reason of learning. Building good relationship with students but not losing the total position of the leader is a skill to master. Teachers should set short- and long-term goals and targets in order to evaluate the students and themselves. Teachers needs to delegate in the right time and observe as a third person. This would allow the students to speak more and connect with one another. There are many other roles a teacher would need to be as unpredictable event occurs during lessons. Hence, being versatile and adaptable would be crucial in becoming an effective teacher. I do believe that with experience and thoughtful goal planning, I could learn to taken on the those roles effectively on my journey of being a teacher.