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I choose two topics (69 and 88 respectively) as I feel they are intrinsically linked. A teacher's role is not to demand attention and talk at students if anything teachers should be expert listeners. You can not teach what learners already know nor can you teach something they can not readily grasp. A teacher must play a constant balance between those two and the only way to do so is through listening to your students as they are the ones truly in charge of the class. Furthermore, I have tried to apply that in the courses I have taught in video game design or in youth sports coaching. I make sure that I respect the students and their intelligence just because they may not be familiar with sports or in this case English does not mean they are not smart and creative learners. They need to be challenged and also helped along should they fail. While teaching video game design one of the other teachers had a propensity to explain a ton of info to students or if they had a problem, he would fix it for them. That is the biggest thing I changed in the class was to empower the students to learn themselves and to try and fail. Another, personal experience I had was learning English and German myself. In both cases I failed often and spectacularly, to this date in English I still struggle with spelling. But through these failures I learned valuable lessons that I was then able to share with students that I taught at my adult literacy class. A teacher must know the pitfalls to be expected but should not always help students avoid them but rather make the experience easier and help them learn from it. At the end of the day teaching English is a challenging and complex task and no amount of teaching can prepare a student for all the different nuances of English. A teacher’s job is rather, to prepare them to take on these challenges themselves and be their own teachers. Finally, the topic of rapport was brought up as a side topic in teaching English in this course. I believe this is a fundamental part of teaching any topic and severely undervalued aspect. The best teachers I had ever had that taught me the most, respected me. They treated each student with respect and took an active role in engaging the students. It never felt like this was out of some sense of obligation, no the great teachers actively cared about the students interests and aspirations. I do not think it was a coincidence that the year I had my favorite teacher was the same year I learned my interest in science and for creativity. I have been unable to fully recreate that in my own classroom experience but with every new class I teach I get a little closer to that goal. In conclusion, the role of a teacher, at least to me, is inextricable linked to the person experiences I have had and have created, and that all teachers need to listen, allow for failure, and most importantly respect the students and value them. Those are the key tenets of teaching and what I build my ideas of teaching around. Edward Bredin
