Finally!

My reasons to want to be inspired…

Starting as a teacher at 20 years old and now more than 20 years experience as a primary schoolteacher. Time flies when you’re having fun, i guess. Still I can remember my first class en first children I had the opportunity to teach as their fulltime teacher. I have learned a lot since then. That’s what’s making being a teacher so exciting, interesting and challenging. That’s what teachers say, Every year, every month and every day is different. Children make the difference, but also education is always changing and improving. We, as educators, are always open to change and are willing to try a variety of ways to teach. Thankfully, because a teacher wants to make children excited about learning, it kind of helps when you yourself are excited.

It’s also my 20 years’ experience that sometimes gets in my way. Co-workers have ideas and want to try new things. I know that some of those things I’ve already tried. I don’t want to be a teacher who shoots everything down, because I maybe already tried that years ago. Things change, children change, their needs change.

In school today there is something different then when I started those years ago. Today we think it’s important to ask children what they want and need. That’s a beautiful thing. Children who have a say in how they can learn new things, can insure that children are more committed and involved. You can teach them skills that they can use in a classroom, but also in real life and throughout their life. This way we can focus less on the results and much more on the process. Pretty dumb that we have been teaching them this all these years. It’s gonna take a whole lot of effort to make this change.

I think is of great interest to relate to children. You want to motivate them. You want them to learn about owning their responsability. I’m very curious to know how this is done in the school we are going to visit. It’s definataly. How do you start to change the way you do things? How can you motivate children is such a way that they take control and take an interest in their learning process? I know, that as a teacher, I have to sort of let go and that’s not easy. I’ve always told children that making mistakes is ok, that that is part of learning. Children don’t always see it this way, they always want the best results. Too focused on the results nad not so much on the process.

I want motivated children, i want extremely motivated children. To me, it seems, that the children who attend the CES school are those children. It looks like they’re learning because they want to learn. They are genuinley interested. How does that come about, what kind of skills do teachers, what kind of skills do the students need?

What kind of teacher do I need to be, to adress children on their intrinsic motivation. What qualities do I need, which conversational skills do I need to have?

Work in progress…