A quote caught my attention. “Much have I learned from my teachers, more from my colleagues, but most from my students.” It was stated in Talmud: Ta’anith 7b. I believe in this based on my own experience.

Teachers are indeed excellent in their chosen field whatever might be their specialization. Some may even teach with their eyes “closed.” However, teachers should not monopolize the classroom discussion. If that is the case, it would never ever be considered a discussion then because communication needs to be a two-way process.

 In the modern trend of teaching the teacher does less of the talking but most of the monitoring. Students perform the process of activities and do the rest of the discussion based on the given formula and product. Teacher does the preparation and the presentation of the lesson in the most enthusiastic way she can. There must be a lot of activities for exercises, evaluation, reinforcement, and enrichment.

A simple classroom discussion may witness a student raising his hand to support or to add a fact or a detail to what the teacher imparted. Furthermore, there are some meetings when the teacher needs to simply sit down and listen as the students perform a parody, a role-play, a debate, or a speech in front of the class. Millennial learners have exciting stories to tell. They have so much amazing facts to share. In the long run of our journey as teachers, we came then to the point of no return to the boring scenes in the world of traditional teaching.

By: Edna Bautista | Teacher III | BNHS | Balanga, Bataan