Inspiring Surpasses Teaching

 

This morning, on my way to campus library, I had a video talk to my nephews, Abbas and Salman. They wondered how my train trip looked like. Besides, they were also curious about how the surrounding just looked like. I knew it was pretty much challenging to do video call while I rushed to the station to catch the earliest train. The fact that speaking out in the train is prohibited was another challenge. Yet I did that for the sake of one purpose, arousing their international posture.

I understand how it is essential to stimulate young generation’s curiosity on things pertaining to cross-cultural understanding and international community. The reason is obvious, that the necessity to get used to embracing the globalisation is inevitable. To my view, gaining insights about how people from different backgrounds of countries, cultures and languages live, my nephews will build their prior knowledge about what sort of life the people from other countries have.

It is still well-kept in my memory that the moment I fell in love with English for the first time was when my junior high school English teacher introduced me to the picture of foreigners (bule). He insisted that English is the only bridge to communication with those foreigners. I thought how cool it would be to interact and make friends with many foreigners albeit my identity of being a villager who lived far away from the city. The thirst of knowing the outer world fuelled my intrinsic motivation to keep on learning English, literally starting from scratches until now being advanced.

I myself am an empiric proof that inspiring is way more effective to lead students to be independent learner than merely a conventional teaching. Teaching will make students learn during the moment we teach them, but inspiring will drive them to learn even when there is nobody urges them to learn. It happens because upon being inspired, students find themselves necessary to learn. Or, in other words, students learn because they need it, and because they are aware of the importance of what they learn to their life. Human is a pragmatic and transactional being. They will only devote everything the matters to them.

Realizing how inspiring important part of jobs as a teacher is, I often design a class where students can interact with people from abroad, either in face-to-face mode or via teleconference media. Either of it works for building curiosity and international posture. Every time I have my foreign friends come for a visit, I ask them to give English classes to my students, or simply have a class for cultural introduction.

So far, my students enjoyed the moment of learning with the guests from abroad. It is such an effective way of stimulating willingness to learn English, yet it is a bit costly as I have to back up for their accommodation and stuffs. However, it is all paid off. I believe, the more I give, the more I receive. That makes sense that I achieve several awards in the current years. Thanks God!

Inspiring is way more effective than teaching to drive independent learners. Believe me!