This is a cliche yet striking message I received from today’s lecture by an expert teacher.
It made me reflect on my own teaching. In the first a few years, I did put some efforts in designing lessons and trying to add some fun to them. One teacher from a renowned high school told me she would never enter the classroom without an interesting idea prepared for the kids. I was inspired by her words for quite a long time.
However, as I focused more and more on test results and suffered more pressure from getting high scores for the kids, I have gradually lost the determination to make each lesson intriguing, instead, I intended to make each lesson more like a crash course to help kids to prepare for exams. Activities were replaced by exercise, discussions by explaination of answers to questions. Now I rarely see sparkling eyes that shone with excitement that stemmed from an exciting idea in the class.
It is a sin to make kids hate something they learn in a class, and it is at least immoral to make kids unmotivated to learn something which is supposed to be full of mysteries and charm for them. As a teacher, there is so much more to do than imparting knowledge.
