Reflective Letter to an Newbie Teacher

Dear Reader,

First of all, I would like to commend you on your decision of becoming a teacher. Imparting knowledge is an age old profession and is among the noblest. It is a means of paying back to the society we live in….the society that made us what we are today.

Writing this letter to you, thinking about my first experiences with teaching has been a walk down memory lane. It has been fifteen years since I started teaching and till date I have no regrets about my decision.

When I began teaching, I was a mere level 1 teacher, probably due to lack of guidance. But over time I tried to evolve and thanks to the PGCTHE course which I have taken up for the past one and a half year, I have resurfaced as a level three teacher. However, you should try to directly hit the bulls eye and start off as a level three teacher. The primary difference between the two is that for a level one teacher teaching is all about exams and about sorting the good students from the bad. However for a level 3 teacher teaching and learning goes beyond the limits of exams and grades.To become an effective teacher you should have clear aims and objectives which you should also state clearly at the start of the class so that the students know what is the learning outcome. Also assessments should be based on these goals for only then will you manage to engage the whole class. Design the assessment paper in such a way that it assesses the students' abilities to understand, analyze and evaluate

The students are the pioneers of tomorrow and teachers have a very influential role in the life of students. Some students consider us as their role-model. Hence, we should to to induce a positive effect on their lives. Also, I abide by the rule that you should practice what you preach and hence consider it of utmost importance to first try to become the ideal sort of personality which I wish the students to be. Moreover, this is the demand of the subject (Religious Studies) that both you and I teach.

As for the method of teaching, basically the type of teaching strategy you use depends upon your students. You should adopt a way of teaching that leaves you satisfied that there has been a constructive flow of knowledge and understanding in your class.

Try to teach in an innovative way that engages your students. Group discussions are a great tool in our field since religious studies is all about the point of views of different people. What you need to be careful about is that your students should be given a chance to use their higher cognitive powers, ie they should be able to not only comprehend what they learn, but they should also be able to analyse, evaluate and apply the knowledge gained to novel situations. Another requirement of our subject is that we should make the students to be able to apply religious knowledge in their everyday life. For this purpose, every now and then I keep activities where I give them a real life problem and ask them to solve it in light of the religious teachings. 

Good luck!