Teaching is like....

People envision teaching differently. Some may see the complexities of it, knowing the ins and outs of teaching, while others focus on the simplicities of teaching, the rewarding aspects for example. I see teaching as a dynamic process, one that is coherently evolving and perhaps becoming more innovative in terms of teaching methods and techniques being used. Therefore, teaching to me is similar to coaching, and to be more specific, I’ll say that teaching is like coaching a soccer team (my favorite sport). As a teacher, we have to coach our students, the “soccer players” on a day-to-day basis. By coaching I mean we have to plan and develop strategies or teaching methods to help our players achieve their goals or rather, score on the field, or the classroom.
We have to consistently motivate them, challenge them, and give them feedback on their performances on the field. We motivate them by soliciting them to try their best; we challenge them by allowing them opportunities for which they can grow as players, perhaps developing new strategies on the field to defeat the opposing team (i.e. exams, SOLs, etc) or maybe challenging them implies how, as teachers, we have to give them new ways to approach a problem. Finally, we give them all sorts of feedback, mainly those that will help them become better players; scrimmages can function as the assignments that are given on a continuous basis and how we use these scrimmages to help our soccer players practice using the tools or “soccer ball, their soccer shoes-foot, etc” to achieve and succeed. For example, scrimmages can also be the assessment activities in which as teachers, we use these activities to see the progress of our students and areas where they are succeeding or need more improvement. Moreover, a good coach will help a soccer player with weaknesses; obviously she/he won’t ignore these weaknesses because that would jeopardize the entire team’s success. Similarly, a teacher has to help those with weaknesses to strengthen and maximize the entire team’s success, because when one soccer player is not performing to his best ability, his performance in turn affects the entire team’s performance. We can appreciate thus, how there is also this unique relationship between the coach and the player and amongst the players themselves. A team succeeds when all its players are performing at their best and likewise, the success of a class is a result of everyone’s successes or whatever input the students contributes to make the class a success.
As a future teacher, I would like to see myself in the role of a coach, one that guides the learning process of my students, challenges them, encourages them, and motivates them. I truly believe that a class should be like a team because in that way we can take care of each other, help each other rise to the top as well as learn from each other and be inspired by each other’s strengths or “soccer talents or tricks.” I want to have strikers and defenders, midfielders and goalkeepers; I want a classroom filled with children of different backgrounds, different cultures, different needs and goals. As a teacher, I want to be able to provide them with the necessary equipment to assure their success. I want to be creative in my teaching methods so that they themselves can be creative with the “ball” or their learning skills. I want lots of goals to be scored, this being the goals they have set for themselves and thus achieved as well as how they have excelled in the classroom; I want regular attendance to practices and absolutely no fouls. I want my children to bring out their best attributes, their best performance on and outside of the field as well as bring out the best in each other. Essentially, I want my students to be excited and feel passionate about “playing on the field” because soccer is not only a sport, it is a deep passion within the players that is waiting to burst out on the field, and reciprocally, I want my children to be excited and feel passionate about learning.