Teacher and Learner

I have been a teacher for 35 years. Some students enjoyed my classes and some didn’t, but that is par for the course. Whether they thought I was good or not, I know that I made the most of whatever ability I have by being a lifelong learner. No teacher can remain as effective as they possibly can be unless they continue to learn themselves. If they stop learning about their subject and other areas of knowledge their lessons calcify and become pointless for both parties.

I remember many of my teachers at Secondary school going through the motions and serving up lessons that never inspired. Others, however, were able to make you interested in their subject through continuously refining their lessons. I didn’t realise that at the time, but I do now through the prism of my own experience. I have taught with colleagues who were still learning in their late 60s and, in one very specific outlier of a case, with a colleague who was 22 and had already decided that he knew enough and was going to run his own language school with money from his girlfriend’s father! What is interesting is that the learners are endlessly interesting outside the lesson and those that have stopped are thoroughly boring to talk to. That younger colleague was the least interesting person I have ever met in the staffroom purely because he had nothing new to say.

Outside of teaching, the same rules apply. Whatever job you are doing you need to be continuously looking to improve and innovate. You should also be looking to learn about things that are unconnected with the job in order to hone your skills within your field of work. My most interesting colleagues outside of teaching have shared the thirst for knowledge that I have.

Let me be clear on one thing. I am not talking about book knowledge or formal knowledge. That’s just as well because very few of us have the ability to devote ourselves to full time work and formal learning at the same time.  This is the problem for so many students at universities nowadays and perhaps the main reason for the increase in AI usage. TV documentaries, Wikipedia articles about factual content, effectively prompted ChatGPT, and books that you pick up for a reason other than education are all viable sources of knowledge.

Keep learning throughout your life and keep teaching formally or informally with the example you set.