“If you want to shine like a sun, first burn like a sun.”
I remember sitting with my 8-year-old nephew during his online classes to operate the laptop. To my amazement, he navigated effortlessly without any help. When classes started, his educator was unable to navigate the unmute button. After the lecture, students in the chat group criticized her for not being up to date with the latest trends and technology.
“Our instructor doesn’t know how to use the web-meeting.”
“Our instructor has no knowledge of technology.”
“Our instructor knows little.”
The students started shooting out such messages, which not just brought down the instructor’s value but also the respect for teachers as a whole. I started wondering why there is a gap between students and teachers.
With natural curiosity, I engaged myself in researching what makes students respect APJ Abdul Kalam as a teacher. Like everyone in the rest of the world, Kalam also had flaws and failures. However, he had a constant quest to learn and teach others. Kalam was a lifelong learner, and so his teaching created curiosity among students to acquire more knowledge.
As an instructor, you must dig deeper into your subject and master it. You should make sure that you are up to date with one or two topics outside your day to day work. Your learning mindset will reinvigorate your students to learn more and turn out to be an intellectual person.
If you’re heading to be a competent educator, you’ve got to acquire skills and knowledge persistently. A lifelong learning mindset is a core component of digital literacy. An educator should be well-proficient in using new technologies and media.
Let us quickly delve into continuous learning and its importance.
Continuous learning is a habit that requires careful cultivation to expand your knowledge and develop future opportunities. Inevitably, you should invest time and resources to avoid stagnation in attaining your full potential.
Before you build any habit, you need to articulate your objectives clearly. Once you have set realistic goals, choose your learning resources, and avoid distractions. Learning resources can be your students, your fellow instructors, your friends, books, websites, articles, MOOCs, or some other digital media.
Adapting to a lifelong learning habit can enable educators to
1.Fosters Creativity
Teachers prefer to use analogies to help students grasp content efficiently by learning and gaining knowledge.
2.Enhances interaction with technology
As the world is going digital, teachers will be able to bring more awareness to students on technological advancements.
3.Creates Positive Influence
As innovative instructors, teachers will be able to develop enthusiast learning approaches that promote student engagement, leaving a positive impact on growing buds.
In essence, a good teacher is indeed a great learner. In the world of accountability and uncertainty, you can’t train a student without becoming a continuous learner. Opting for the right Faculty Development Program can foster your knowledge, skills, and professional competence to enrich your teaching ability. FDP makes teachers efficient by bringing the best out of them.
Be inquisitive, and keep learning to excel as instructors !
