Is a teacher a tour guide?

I felt as though my metaphor was a good reflection of the role of an educator. Tour guides are fun, motivational, encouraging, knowledgable, and have amazing leadership skills. They are found globally and experience diversity every day! This is what a classroom should look like. If we compared these two professions in the past it would be hard to overlap them, but in todays society all classes are very technology mediated so finding similarities is easy. With the modern world teachers are able to create a fun motivated environment using technology. They are able to keep a stable pace with the help of educational programs. They provide a leadership role that is more student-centered than before. One thing I noticed was that these two were only similar when there was technology involved.

A problem I found with my metaphor was the inability to go into depth about a teachers role. It was easy to compare the two with just main characteristics. Teaching is such a unique profession that requires you to be “always on”. The hours of blood, sweat, and tears put in throughout a school year is different than most professions. Teachers are required to be more than just a smart role model. They are required to provide care and safety to the future of our world. Not many other professions can say the same.

I really had fun making this blog and can see how this could be used in a classroom. I must say, picking graphics to add in was very enjoyable!

 

Bring it all together

My end metaphor was the same as the one I had started with “a teacher is a tour guide.” I really enjoyed the learning process I went through and felt like I had reflected on some of the many characteristics a great teacher needs! I am currently trying to find my own professional identity and this has helped me develop that. With that being said, I discovered the role of the educator in a technology-mediated classroom is very important.

As a tour guide in your classroom you need to be flexible. Moving away from a set lesson plan and taking time to “watch the sunset” is necessary. A classroom is “often changing” and being flexible is essential to meet the needs of all students. (Thomas, Beauchamp, 2010) Students all have different personalities and so changing a lesson to motivate students may need to be done.

Encouraging autonomy is important in a class. Being open to new ideas and opinions is a skill that needs to be learned. But, more importantly it is critical for students to become individuals and self discover. This brings in the idea of the student-centered classroom. By having a class make connections to their own lives promotes the deeper understanding of material. Linking this back to a tour guide was the same outcome. Tour guides must listen to their “students” opinions and surface knowledge of a subject in order to understand where the basic knowledge level is.

Tour guides must keep a stable pace while walking with a group. Their will always be the few people who are ahead and a few that are behind. Finding the correct pace is a duty. With the new technologies it is much easier for teachers to find this constant pace of teaching. There are websites and applications that can help those behind and be used as extra work for those ahead!

Teachers and tour guides are both, full of knowledge. How you use this knowledge is important. Not only should a teacher explain the facts and concepts of a theory but, should promote a deeper, critical thinking of content. (Downes, 2011) Teachers need knowledge of the past, present, and future to do this.

I used “The cha cha slide” as an example of the leadership role of a teacher. A teacher should focus on working together, creating a supportive environment, and shared-decision making. Again, I explained the importance of sharing the leadership role and create a student-centered classroom in order to motivate students to learn. This is also relevant in being a tour guide because making a tour fun is how people will learn the most and be motivated to participate.

Finally, I discovered the importance of making a classroom global. Of course a tour guide is a position that makes connections around the world but in many classes we lack world community. If teachers learn how to use technology is an effective way they can give students the opportunity to learn about the world first hand. As an educator you must provide your students the chance to be integrated and in touch with the world.

References:

Downes, S. (2010). The role of the educator. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephen-downes/the-role-of-the-educator_b_790937.html?utm_hp_ref=email_share

Thomas, L., & Beauchamp, C. (2011). Understanding new teachers’ professional identities through metaphor. Teaching and Teacher Education, 27, 762-769.

Go Global! 🕸 🌎

Tour guides are found all over the world. They have the ability to see diversity and community in a broader sense than many. The people who pay for tour guides are mostly tourists of a city which is why tour guides have the sense of multiculturalism.

Unfortunately many teachers don’t have this variety in North American classes. A lot of teachers have a hard time moving away from a curriculum that teaches white privilege and male supremacy. (McIntosh, 1988) Luckily with the new technologies in the classroom teachers are able to teach about things outside of their country.  www.lynda.com is a GREAT website that has many resources for learning new technologies. You can sign-up for a free trial that gives you access to learning about coding, 3D animation, and more.

Learning new tools can help make your classroom be global and learn about other countries and people first hand! Using technology based tools moves your class from learning from a textbook to learning languages, cultures, and communication skills from  talking to communities from around the world.

A great resource that can be used in the classroom is https://iearn.org. Its mission is “learn with the world, not just about it”. It “enables students and educators worldwide to design and participate in global projects as part of their regular classroom and after school programs.” This is an example of an iearn project.

 

References:

https://iearn.org

www.lynda.com

McIntosh, P. (1988). White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming To See Correspondences through Work in Women’s Studies. Center for Research on Women, Working Paper No. 189. Retrieved from https://web-b-ebscohost-com.proxy.ubishops.ca:2443/ehost/detail/detail?sid=440c323d-564f-48e7-a1db-a84ef8092efc%40sessionmgr111&vid=0&hid=106&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#AN=ED335262&db=eric

 

Follow the leader 💃💃💃💃

“Remember the difference between a boss and a leader; a boss says “Go!” – A leader says “Let’s go!” ”  ~E.M. Kelly

I talked about the active teacher in a few posts. These teachers are motivational, supportive, and entertaining. They make learning fun! Unlike a boss a leader focuses on shared-decision making, teamwork, and community building.A great teacher will also share this leadership role by providing students the opportunity to be in control. These are all aspects of a student-centered classroom!

Tour guides also need to have the mind set of a leader. They need to be creative and have the ability to paint a compelling vision, build the trust, and motivate people to participate.

A leader also has the responsibility to provide guidance to all, this can be shown in modelling the activity or giving a path through and underground cave!

The song “The Cha Cha Slide” by DJ Casper is a great example of having fun while you are being guided by following someone. This upbeat classic motivates you to participate and is very entertaining! This is the type of environment that should be found in a class or on a tour!

 

 

Full of knowledge

As touched on in the first post “guiding you in the right direction” teachers and tour guides must be full of knowledge.This knowledge should go beyond facts and concepts and touch on “a wider set of values, beliefs, ways of observing and even mannerisms associated with being a physicist”. (Downes, 2011)  This knowledge must touch on knowledge of the past, present, and future.

Knowledge of the PAST:

Teachers must have a basic understanding of many concepts that have shaped our present. Math, science, history, and psychology are some of the broad range of subjects pre-service teachers must study before getting a degree in education. With this foundation of knowledge teachers will be able to create better unit designs and be a more effective and active teacher. (Shulman, 1987) The quality of the teacher is raised when they know what they are teaching.

Similarly, a tour guide must have knowledge of the past. A guide who is reading from a sheet is more likely to stick to the simple surface knowledge instead of promoting connections and deeper understanding.

Knowledge of the PRESENT:

It is important to be knowledgable that the class you have in the present is not the same as the class you had in the past. They have different personalities and abilities. Recognizing this is half the challenge! In the 21st century classroom technology will be a teachers best tool!

Knowledge of the FUTURE:

A teachers job is to prepare students for the future. Of course teachers cannot be fortune tellers and be able to tell the future, but there is a general knowledge that we are an ever changing society. The most important thing is that teachers promote knowledge and push reflective thinking on the students work.

Reference:

Downes, S. (2010). The role of the educator. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephen-downes/the-role-of-the-educator_b_790937.html?utm_hp_ref=email_share

Shulman, L. (1987). Knowledge and teaching: foundations of the new reform. Harvard Educational Review. (52) 1. Retrieved from: http://people.ucsc.edu/~ktellez/shulman.pdf

 

A stable pace

A good teacher recognizes that students will not be at the same pace. They learn to not hinder those ahead and work hard to keep the stragglers up to speed. The methods used to do this vary for every teacher and tour guide. But, the ultimate goal is to make sure everyone makes it to the end!

The same goes for a tour guide. There will always be a few people who take a couple extra minutes looking at a sculptor, as long as they are learning and continue along they are still learning.

The methods that are now available in the 21st century classrooms helps teachers work with the various ability levels of the students. With the new technologies available for children who have developmental disabilities keeping everyone at a decent pace is easy! In today’s classroom many children have a computer to use at all times or have access to one.There are amazing applications offered to help those children who need a little extra help.  Students don’t need to go at the same pace to get the same learning outcome, as long as everyone makes it through the year!

Applications that can be used in a class:

-Ghotit Real Writer

• Used to assist people with dyslexia and dysgraphia in their English writing and text correction
• The application corrects badly spelled words, confused words, homophones, grammar, and punctuation

-The link attached is a website that has thousands of application used for children with Autism. It gives you the option to filter the games by age, subject, the device you need it for, and many more!

• https://www.autismspeaks.org/autism-apps

-Raz-kids

• This is a fun website/ application used for increasing reading comprehension skills!

 

Technology is a great resource for teachers trying to keep their class at a stable pace!

 

Autonomy?

While reading an article about the comparison between teachers and tour guides I came across the subject of autonomy. I was unpleasantly surprised at how this author stated that both teachers and tour guides are…

“…Firmly in control of the itinerary – ‘autonomy’ is not encouraged.~”

-Simon Borg

Not encouraged?!?!?!

I must disagree with this point because what many people don’t know is that autonomy is one area in schools that should be learned in kindergarten and worked on throughout your schooling. (QEP)

Encouraging individuality is very important for a great teacher. Although there is a curriculum they must follow, supporting autonomy and independence is important to introduce deeper understanding. Having a student (or people on your tour) memorize facts will not make them stick. Having a self discovery and connection is the best way to learn and remember things. This can be done and seen in a student-centered classroom.

A great example of an autonomous figure is Merida from Disney’s “Brave”. She is unlike any other princess in the sense that she is a self-controling individual who has the capability to save herself.

 

Reference:

Borg, S. (2013). Teachers as Tour Guides? Retrieved from http://simon-borg.co.uk/teachers-as-tour-guides/

Quebec Education Program (2001). Quebec Education Program: Approved Version. [PDF]. Retrieved from http://www1.mels.gouv.qc.ca/sections/programmeFormation/primaire/pdf/educprg2001bw/educprg2001bw.pdf

 

Take a minute and watch the sunset ☀️

 

Every Good tour guide must have a clear plan of what they want to achieve for the day.This requires a lesson plan or just a simple sheet with the connecting facts. A GREAT tour guide however has a clear plan, but is FLEXIBLE to move away from the set procedure.These are the tour guides who can take a minute from the normal route and watch the sunset. A great teacher must also have this quality.

With a new class every year the student’s needs can vary drastically. Having a plan for the year is needed for structure but sticking to that set idea is unreasonable.

I have seen this in my own second year practicum. I went from reading a scripted lesson to encouraging new twists in our activities. I quickly realized that you cannot be a perfectionist when it comes to work. I had given my fourth grade students a writing assignment that involved writing a summary on a book that they had read in class. I could tell after 10 minutes that the students were unmotivated and off task. I quickly changed my whole lesson plan and had the children take out their laptops and create a comic strip to summarize the book.I knew that we lived in a society that is surrounded by technology but then realized how this affects the schooling of todays generation. Changing my lesson not only showed me the flexibility I unknowingly had, but also how integrating the laptops into the lesson created the motivation because they worked with something familiar!

“Good teaching comes not from following a recipe, but from consistently putting student needs first.” -Leila Christenbury

Reference:

Christenbury, L. (2010). The Flexible Teacher. The Effective Educator, 68(4), 46-50. Retrieved from http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/dec10/vol68/num04/The-Flexible-Teacher.aspx

Guiding you in the right direction

“Metaphors We Live By” by George Layoff and Mark Johnson was a great article! I was very interested by the idea that what we perceive in this world and how we relate to things is driven by our conceptual system. They related the concepts we live by to metaphors and how metaphors are reflected is our everyday language and expression. As a future teacher I had a hard time connecting teaching to anything! Teachers have such a unique profession that requires straining hard work. We are trusted with the lives of others and are entrusted to correctly educate the future. With that being said I was interested in the idea of the future and tried to think of some characteristics the coincided with something else. The best comparison I could think of was a tour guide!

“Tour guides are people who see depth and texture and connections where others don’t. That is why the best teachers are masters of the obvious. They see the same things that we do, but they are aware of so much more. And when they point it out, it changes the way we see everything.”

-Velvet Elvis

A teacher is like a tour guide, leading people on a learning voyage of an area that they know about and that they hope to encourage others to want to learn more about.

Teachers have both a challenging and rewarding job. They must have a wide range of knowledge and have the gift of inspiring others. Promoting learning and deeper understanding is a big part of the job description. Teachers can be fun and entertaining because of the multitude of facts that they know. Their job goes beyond this because teachers have an amazing ability to stitch the facts together into a larger understanding. As a teacher you are teaching about the past, present, and the future.

Similarly, tour guides must also have these qualities.As a tour guide you must have a broad knowledge about the history, culture, social dynamics, and other aspects of a particular place and the individuals who live there. You must be fun, entertaining, and good in front of a crowd.

Whether you want to call an educator a teacher or a tour guide the two occupations must guide your learning in the right direction.

Reference:

Thomas, L., & Beauchamp, C. (2011). Understanding new teachers’ professional identities through metaphor. Teaching and Teacher Education, 27(4), 762-769. doi:10.1016/j.tate.2010.12.007