Knowledge transfer
My teaching metaphor refers to the knowledge transfer which usually happens in our classes or in the student-teacher interaction we have in the schools where we work at. It is a well known-fact that knowledge transfer is not only about having a specific purpose of teaching in the classroom but all the insights that students can get from us as teachers in a regular school day anywhere.
In the picture above, you can see a colourful ladder that teacher and student are stepping on. That colourful ladder is basically the ongoing process that students go through for a long period until they have learnt enough from us and may go beyond 'success' to start a new stage in their lives. The colours mean the different life-fields that students need to approach in order to be all set for future challenges in their lives such as university. What I mean by 'life-fields' are the values, life-skills, intelligence, danger-awareness, passion, integrity, relationships and the ideology that students need to combine to be an effective student.
Taking into account what has been said, teachers need to play different roles inside and outside the classroom. It depends on the teacher to play different roles in the school though. There are many teachers' roles mentioned by different authors but not all of them are going to be mentioned here. One of the roles that teachers are related to is the learning facilitator. As the name speaks by itself, the teacher needs to facilitate learning to the students by using the methodologies that are considered to be the most appropriate for the students' needs. This takes the teacher to study each student and realise that each of them is different with their own personal life difficulties, which, make students have a particular learning style. Besides that, teachers also have to be aware of the students' level of English in each targeted skill so that they can use activities, worksheets, videos, books and others that can suit students' level of language knowledge.
Another role that teachers need to play is the classroom supporter. That means that the teacher needs to continuously observe their students when they are doing in-classroom activities or in any other classroom duty. Therefore, the teacher needs to provide new ideas if students are stuck in their learning or give feedback when it is necessary. Over time, students will start to feel a friendship bond with the teacher and may express more confidential information related to their learning issues that they might be embarrassed to tell at first.
Mentor or counsellor is another role that teachers need to assume inside or outside the classroom. Teachers usually forget that they are one of students' first role model in society though. Nevertheless, by being the role model of the students, teachers' job is to advise students with problems that can be school-related or not. Sometimes students do not have good parents' support at home and they are not heard at home. That is the time when teachers may give instruction to their students in any life-fields. It is pretty well-known that children and teenagers are surrounded by different issues that become obstacles in their learning process. That improves teacher-student relationship, too.
Last but not least, the teacher also needs to be a society builder. In other words, every single teacher, no matter what the teacher teaches, needs to be pretty aware that we as teachers are preparing our students for society. That is to say, students will someday apply the knowledge and the values we taught in the school for their own wellness. This makes our job very important. That is why the teacher can not just assume that lessons are supposed to be given passively and that there is nothing else to be done in the school. As mentioned throughout this text, teachers need to take into account a variety of roles in order to prepare their students not only in the subject but in all areas that students need to develop.
Additionally, to finish my teaching metaphor I would like to share this quote with you who are reading this:
"If a lawyer, doctor or dentist had 40 people in his office at one time, all of whom had different needs, and some of whom didn't want to be there and were causing trouble and the doctor, lawyer or dentist, without assistance, had to treat them all with professional excellence for nine months, then he might have some conception of the classroom teacher's job"
-Donald D. Quinn
