His articles are read in the newspaper every weekend, and it seems that being a teacher has shaped him as a person. how would it be Miguel Angel Santos Guerra What if I wasn’t a teacher?
Interesting question, only probabilistic answer. Making a future retrospective is not easy. I believe that the execution of the profession shapes us as human beings. Because profession is a unique way of being and being in the world, understanding reality and communicating with people. It’s a way of being political subjects. What would it be like if you didn’t embrace the teaching profession? It’s hard for me to imagine because I always saw myself where I was. Of course, it depends on the profession he would choose if he had chosen. At one point, I was attracted to a career in Journalism. If I had followed him, I think I would not have developed the way to communicate with others, understand the world and relate to knowledge in the same way.
In various passages of The Emotions of the Teacher Profession, he points out that teaching is working with the hearts and minds of students. Is it harder to work with the heart or the mind?
Both dimensions are inseparable. It is sometimes forgotten that teaching requires an emotional disposition towards learning. But answering the question is more difficult than emotional education, because school has always been the domain of the cognitive, not the emotional. Teachers and students were asked how much you knew when entering and exiting, but not how you felt. The initial training of teachers suffers from significant deficits in emotional training. The thing to say about the selection process: what matters is only how much is known and most people know how to teach. I recently published another book, Educar el corazón and Evaluar con el corazón, also in HomoSapiens Ediciones. I think this issue should be emphasized.
Teaching is not without its challenges, often speaking of those involved in the political or social realm. But since this is a book about the emotions of teaching, I want to ask you what is the main emotional challenge facing a teacher today.
The teacher’s main emotional challenge is to arouse interest, arouse curiosity, and earn the trust and love of his students. Students learn from teachers they love. You can achieve this with emotional intimacy, commitment, hard work and example. The noise of who we are reaches our students’ ears with such force that it prevents them from hearing what we are saying. There is no more beautiful and effective form of authority than example. Emilio Lledó says that the teaching profession derives its authority from love for what is taught and love for what is taught. I could not agree more. Then there are other more ambitious challenges, such as producing transformative education projects from the nation’s public schools. A school for all and for all, public school as a great social mixer.
I know almost firsthand the pain, sadness, and helplessness that teaching professionals often experience because of personal circumstances. Have you suffered from teaching, have there been times, circumstances, or situations where negative emotions made you think about leaving it forever?
No. I didn’t go into that trance, I never thought it was better to let it go. Moreover, it was difficult for me to live the moment of retirement. In fact, I asked for emeritus status, which means a three-year voluntary extension beyond the age of 70. It is not that he has not experienced painful situations in teaching and in the management of institutions. Of course, I’ve had difficulties, disappointments and failures. But the pain never made me want to throw in the towel. The challenges are there and sometimes they get very difficult; some are due to the attitudes of students who do not want to study, others are due to the educational administration, which constantly passes laws without reaching an educational contract and often unfairly underestimates and does not greatly improve the education and selection processes of families and society. teaching.
You highlight many of the “distractions” that students present today.
They’re very powerful: they seduce model offers (we propose models through discussion), they live in a neoliberal culture that contradicts almost all educational assumptions, they get detrimental influences from networks and, you know, being successful in school definitely doesn’t mean having a job and a successful socialization process.
Classes are spaces, hidden experiences between students and teachers, it’s hard to explain what’s going on there to outsiders. For this reason, often the teacher’s work is not adequately understood or evaluated. In your opinion, what is the least understood aspect of teaching, which is treated so unfairly at the social level?
Your question rests on a harsh but unfortunately true claim: teaching is a duty that is treated unfairly by society. Its importance for people and societies is not understood, and we are what our education is. “Human history is a long race between education and disaster,” says Herbert Wells. And it is so because education teaches us to think (not what to think) and to live together. I believe that the complexity, beauty and importance of this unfair treatment is due to ignorance. Teaching is a more difficult profession than many people think because it consists of awakening a love of knowledge, of turning the student into a chronic and autonomous learner. In teaching, if it’s A, then there’s no such thing as B. What really happens is if it’s A, then it could be B. The best professional in any profession is the one who makes the best use of materials, in this business he is the one who releases them the most and best. This complex task is performed in enormously diverse groups. There are two types of students: those who cannot be classified and those who are difficult to classify. But you have to work with all of them at the same time.
Moreover, he does not hesitate to emphasize this in the Emotions of the Teaching Profession, it is a much more beautiful task than it seems…
Because it is based on emotional and intellectual complicity. Actually, the title of my first book was, I train you, you train me. It is also beautiful because its fields yield almost relentless harvests. And because it’s based on love.
The book, starting with the foreword (by Chis Oliveira, Professor of Philosophy), has testimonies of former students of how you have impacted not only their education but also their lives. How does a teacher deal with this without getting smug? Or on the other hand, without falling into such an enormous responsibility?
If you are moderately reasonable, there is more humility than arrogance. There are many more than the thousands of students you have that you have never impressed. If you haven’t done any harm to them. I believe we receive much more from our students than we give them. A few years ago I wrote a book titled Teaching or learning work. The more you read, write or teach, the more you realize how much you don’t know. The philosopher Nicholas de Cusa spoke of learned ignorance. Humility is almost inevitable. On the other hand, there is so much you cannot achieve when working with “so complex and sensitive material” (concepts, feelings, values, attitudes, motives…) that it would be foolish to be arrogant. Responsibility can grasp, of course, but it can also mobilize, encourage and encourage. In the teaching profession, there are not only students, but also colleagues, institutions, projects, research, trips, congresses, conferences, publications and people who have left us forever. In all these areas of professional activity, deep feelings develop.
So, do you agree with what Rubem Alves said, and in Emotions of the Teaching Profession you mention that teaching is an exercise in immortality because the teacher somehow lives on in his students?
How is it not shared? When Rubem Alves says that the teacher never dies, he means that there is an emotional legacy in addition to the knowledge one. And that’s something I can personally confirm. I believe education leaves a mark. Of course, this trace is sometimes very deep and sometimes superficial. I will not rule out situations in which a more or less deep disappointment will occur. That’s why I’ve included a text where I apologize to those who have made no contribution to the book, and even those who have harmed it by action or omission. Of course I wasn’t aware of it, but I’m sure there will be cases, although I don’t know how many. What I do know is that they all hurt me.
Source: Informacion
Brandon Hall is an author at “Social Bites”. He is a cultural aficionado who writes about the latest news and developments in the world of art, literature, music, and more. With a passion for the arts and a deep understanding of cultural trends, Brandon provides engaging and thought-provoking articles that keep his readers informed and up-to-date on the latest happenings in the cultural world.