Reflection prompt:
“The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.”
Response: The quote is a very beautiful summary of my conversations with my F.A. and S.A. this week. I think that telling only forces students to learn by rote (e.g. telling students the definition of a word), while explaining something to students subjects students to a passive role in their learning (e.g. teaching students the root words and its meanings, breaking down bigger words).
Demonstration is an important part of a lesson I think, because it is a time for a teacher to model the activity before encouraging students to practice it themselves (e.g. demonstrating a science experiment). My goal as a teacher is to inspire, which is to make learning much more student centred and meaningful to them. I am still learning about what the best practices are to inspire students. I wonder if setting up a classroom for students to have research and exploration time built-in is where the inspiration might happen. Perhaps the goal is to teach students how to teach each other, and the teacher, so that they are in charge of their own learning.