After a great online conference, RSCON3, time to get back to the 30 Goals Challenge!
Being a guide in your classroom and your school is very important. It should be part of a teacher’s make-up and being to be a guide towards the students and towards other teachers in their school.
A Guide to the Students
- A lot of the top educational systems in the world are exactly at the top because they allow students and show them the way to researching on their own. No ready answers from educators, no pressure – the teachers present the subject matter and let the kids explore and find the answers on their own. And that is why we are there for them. To facilitate their learning – not in giving them ready-made answers, but showing them their potentials, that on their own and through searching and looking and researching they can find the answer and their way to knowledge. Each student in their own way. In my classes, the best lessons come when I am listening to the kids speak to one another and debate and explain – I am only there and intervene to give them encouragement and praise and lead them perhaps to something else, when I see that they want more to learn.
A Guide to Teachers
- There is nothing better than a school full of teachers who have a great relationship among them, communicate and always know they will be there for each other. A bit difficult to happen throughout the whole school, but at least it can happen for a number of teachers in a specific school – and then, who knows? The others might join them as well!
- Let your teachers know you are always there for them, be it for school-related things or personal things, if you can help them of course. There is nothing better for them to know they can depend on you and come to you without hesitation, whatever your role in the school.
- Guide them to new things: social networks like Twitter, Facebook and now Google+ and so on and let them know how they have helped you with your professional development. Let them know about conferences and workshops – I let them know I am going and sometimes they join, because they feel better when they are with someone else. Once we are there, they open up and meet other educators as well (and see what good stuff they are missing when they do not come!).
Be a guide for both students and other teachers – someone else has guided you and is guiding you too – everyone is a link to a great chain!
- Read Shelly Terrell’s post on Goal Number Fifteen.
Vicky Loras's Blog 
Like the new blog look, Vicky !
Nice post. I think the most important things can be so obvious, and yet we forget them. We need to be the guide, the role model through our actions even more than through our words or our vision. But I’m preaching to the choir here š Whoop whoooooop ! cheers, b
Hi Brad!
Thanks so much, I am glad you like how the blog looks! I changed it a little and gave it some RSCON3 flair – yay!!!
You used the right expression – a role model through our vision. That says it all and thanks for commenting!
Whoop whoop!!!
Vicky
Wow! Vicky,very inspirational. Like it… A LOT! True to be said,we need to be the guide whether in or out of the classroom.
aza aza fighting girl! ^^
Hi Icha!
Thanks so so much for the great uplifting comment! You are right, both in and out of the classroom, a teacher has to be a guide. Go team #iTDi!!!!!
Talk soon,
Vicky
Guiding students is our job and I know it can be so easy to pull too far one way or the other given time constraints, material availability and finances. I love a guided discovery task as much (probably more) than the next guy, but what teachers often confuse is guiding and just plain letting students go almost aimlessly on a task. A good guided discovery task takes time, effort and reflection to build:
1) Is the task using relevant language?
2) Does the task provide comparison or clues about the target language?
3) Will students find it obvious enough to pick up on these clues?
4) Do most students follow the guided path correctly when doing this task?
Great post, Vicky.
Hi Tyson!
Thank you for yet another comment that makes me think!
I absolutely agree with what you say that educators confuse guiding and allowing students to go on without goals in a specific task. The questions you pose are very important:
1) The task language must always include material previously (to refresh knowledge!) or currently taught.
2) In my opinion, the task should include clues to the target language, to enhance the discovery of it and perhaps serve as a connector to the target language – that is, they might remember one of the clues in the future and connect it to the specific language item.
3) The clues should be there in order to pave the way a little for the target language,but not go so far as to uncover lots of information!
4) The teacher should guide (ha ha!) the students in such a way that they are monitored as to whether they are following the correct path.
Thanks Tyson!
Vicky
Great answers, Vicky. Those are the questions I ask myself whenever evaluating a guided discovery task either I have made myself or have snipped from a book.
Excellent questions, Tyson! We should always keep them in mind when teaching. I like your comments because they always raise important points.
Thank you,
Vicky
Dearest Vicky,
What an inspirational article. I hope many will read and get inspired to be an authentic guide: first to themselves, then to others.
True guidance comes from within and is something you radiate through your presence first; then, it automatically flows into your words, into your actions: as you are!
Kindest regards,
jf
Hi Jens!
I am so happy to see your comment here (Jens is the Director of Studies of our language school, a mentor, an amazing educator and a linguistic genius, currently learning Hawai’ian!)!
Thank you so much for your wonderful words – they give me a lot of strength and you know I feel the same way about you. I am a very lucky person to know you and lucky educator to work with you!
A million thanks,
Vicky