Mike’s post reminded me of an important question: while the students try to adjust to the class, we, as teachers, are also trying to adjust to the class each time we enter the classroom. How do we balance the role of being authority and moderator of the class?
Since my childhood, I have been taught that the teachers are the absolute authorities in the classroom, and we need to obey strict disciplines in the class and follow the teachers’ orders and instructions without questioning them.
As we grew up and entered the colleges, the classroom setting has been changed. We, more often than ever, have been given opportunities to play some roles in our own classrooms: doing presentations, role playing, etc. We, as students, sometimes are also enjoying the fun of being a teacher taking over the class. At that time, I would be wondering, what is my teacher doing now? Is he/she also listening to us? Is what we are doing right now something new to him/her? What will he/she respond to our performance? At this moment, our teacher turned to be one of the audiences, communicating with us through eye contact and facial expressions. However, whenever I didn’t have the confidence to report what I was about to present, or say, I didn’t have enough knowledge about certain information; or when I was not very sure about the reliability of other classmates’ presentation, I would be eager to become an obedient student, wishing the teacher would take over the control of the whole class, and give us the detailed demonstration of that knowledge.
But how could a teacher understand our needs and our thoughts in time? I sometimes understand it must be a difficult thing for teachers to notice when they should shift their roles from a moderator/co-learner to becoming the real authority in the class.
Maybe that depends on the teacher’s experience. Maybe teaching is also a process, a learning process…
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