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“If your plan is for one year, plant rice;
If your plan is for ten years, plant trees;
If your plan is for a hundred years,
Educate children.”
As we all know teaching in the 21st century is a big challenge we all new teachers have taken, but we also know that educating children or people as a whole will make a big difference in our world since what we transmit in our classes is being transmitted by our students in the future.
We believe that to be in front of a class is not only a privilege but also an opportunity to make students be aware of all the tools that are available and that can be used in the classroom. We also consider extremely important to mention that it is necessary not only to teach the four micro- skills but also to teach the new skill that is emerging in our society which is closely related to technology.
Furthermore, we consider that most of the students may feel that learning English is difficult and boring, but we strongly believe that if students are engaged with their world in which technology is around them, they will feel that learning English is more attractive and funnier. Since we believe that students create and construct their learning, we think that if students are using all the technological tools that are available for them, they will feel more attempted and motivated to learn since teaching and learning using technology is more interactive.
As well as we believe that technology is important in the classroom, we strongly think that to create rapport and to know students’ needs to be met are extremely important, so we must be close to students. To avoid a technology-based teaching, we believe that we have more than one tool to teach and create an interactive class as well as we may create it using technology. For example, we believe that drama is a useful tool that is fun and available for all. Since we all know that technology may not work sometimes, we believe that drama and many other activities can be used to maintain a good environment among students and to make students participate, learn, and get fun at the same time.
Even though we know that we are not experts in many technological tools that are useful in the classroom to teach in the 21st century, we all know that using technology in the classroom makes a huge change in the way we teach; that is to say, it makes us not only teachers of the 21st century but also learners through experience. We believe that to learn while teaching is a gift because we have the opportunity of teaching for others to learn, and to learn for teaching others.
We also believe that teaching English does not mean spending couples of hours in front of a class, but it means enjoying every single hour, every single minute we teach and giving the best in every single class
Knowing our students’ needs, for instance, is very essential because by doing this, we can see the strengths and weaknesses they may have. Moreover, it helps us know how to motivate our students to learn not only with the old-fashioned methods but with the new technological tools. When we get to know our students’ needs, we can improve our way of teaching, and we can present the language with even better methodologies which might help us reach our goals with our students.
One of the most powerful goals we have is to make our students enjoy this language and to make them understand that it is not that difficult. I want them to know that in this century there are many materials and devices they may use to learn more every day. Also, we believe that if we begin to change the way we teach in order to better the learning process, other teachers can get to know the necessity of changing the way they teach since our world and our students are changing at a rapid speed.
Finally, we want to emphasize that one of the most amazing things of teaching in the 21st century is that we are not only teaching our students, but also being taught by them. We are breaking the gap between old fashioned methods and technology in order to combine them to make our teaching different and our learning more productive.
A teacher affects eternity: he can never tell where his influence stops.
Henry Adams