I strongly hold the belief that as individuals mature, they go through various stages of development all of which require support and proper guidance from their more experienced associates. As an educator, I desire to ensure that all my students meet their fullest potential in terms of intellectual and social development. To this end, I believe that a safe environment should be provided and this provision should constantly encourage the taking of risks and the concept of teamwork. There are several things that I believe the teacher should strive to achieve. First, the teacher should act as a guide to his/her students. Secondly, the educator is supposed to ensure that students develop a natural interest in education, and finally, the teacher is supposed to ensure that the students use the knowledge gained in education for personal betterment.
In higher levels of education, in particular, the educator’s role is to ensure that his/her students have adequate access to information. This requires him/her to be the primary source of information by ensuring that the students are furnished with sufficient knowledge; knowledge which they can use constructively to obtain even more information for themselves. Students should be given the chance to identify the things that interest them especially by letting them decide what they believe is relevant to their lives. When drafting a curriculum, effort should be made to ensure that it is shaped around the student’s interests. In this way, the students will be encouraged to take their classwork even more seriously and develop the will to learn. This is because the students will develop some sense of curriculum ownership and in this way, they will be able to come up with effective strategies to meet their goals.
I strongly believe in allowing each student to fully express himself or herself. This, I can confirm can be achieved by identifying the unique characteristics of each student and developing approaches that can effectively help them adequately exert themselves academically as well as socially. One of my greatest hopes as a tutor is to inculcate the culture of learning in my students. In the rapidly changing world, it is only imperative that students not only go to books with the sole intention of gaining knowledge to help them pass exams. Students should be driven to go through publications to obtain information that would make them more knowledgeable outside a classroom setting.
As tutors strive to grow their career from strength to strength they must appreciate that in this field, it is the response of the students in terms of performance that will isolate award-winning teachers from strugglers in the profession. With this in mind, I strive to ensure that my presence in class leaves an impact and this is usually confirmed by the active class participation of my students. I have come to discover that making the material more relevant to the students by drawing examples from an everyday modern living will always have a positive impact.
More often than not, teachers tend to be rigid in terms of the way they deliver in classroom settings. I have, however, over time come to learn that change is generally desirable in the profession and that by tutors embracing new concepts as they come, they can develop more effective strategies to boost their delivery.