CAN STAR TEACHERS CREATE LEARNING COMMUNITIES?
How learning communities be built? Sure, star teachers can create learning communities. But, it takes a greater collective and participative effort to advocate and maintain sustainable learning communities. Meaning, star teachers, no matter how they are deeply engaged in the teacher-student relationship and to everything that comes between them, cannot accomplish the objective of creating a learning environment, especially inside the classroom, minus the help of equally important roles. Of course, the establishment of a learning culture requires the participation of school officials, administrators, principals, faculty members – stars and otherwise non-stars, parents, social workers/NGOs and the students, certainly. Cultivating continuously learning communities calls a proactive, holistic approach wherein these people could work hand-in-hand with less pressure on demarcation issues (i.e. stars vs. non-stars).
One of the most essential elements of developing learning communities is its processual nature. The development process in itself is a learning experience that follows the philosophy of Henry Adams when he said that “a teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.” Indeed, learning communities could be only successfully established through fusing together what the teachers learned before becoming full-pledged teachers and the experiences that the profession endowed them and will endow them in the future. Towards the creation of learning communities, there is the necessity to pool together the know-how, expertise and competencies that are acquired from the teachers’ teachers down to the teachers’ students, to conceptualize agreed-upon practices of stars and non-stars and then to apply learnings in universally-accepted manner.
That is to say, teachers were once students, and they are well aware of the needs, requirements and expectations in the classroom as students. And, now as teachers, they are more than obliged to respond to the needs, requirements and expectations in the classroom of their incumbent students – be it for stars and non-stars. What these teachers could do is to draw from own experiences as students and applying it now as teachers. In a way, this is not a question of who are better teachers. The idea is central on how the academia could learn from the experiences of star teachers within and outside the classroom and how these could be utilized in guiding non-stars to becoming one.
To wit, honing star teachers is not a panacea. But just, or could be, a starting point in further creation of sustainable learning communities. So, what is the value of having star teachers? Are plain teachers not enough? How non-star teachers would react to this? Important is that there will be no star teachers if there are no non-stars. This is not a challenge after all, transforming non-stars to becoming stars. Having star teachers is so important in achieving servanthood-in-the-classroom and teaching-from-the-heart in every sense of the phrases. Notable too is that although being a non-star is not at all bad, by becoming a star teacher s/he could be conditioned that teaching is not a mere 15-30 environment where pay is the most important factor but could be motivated of teaching students for the love of teaching itself. Not love of the profession, instead of the art and science of ‘humanization’ – of making an individual human in character, characteristics and nature by means of bestowing individuals with values, qualities, ethics and ideals commonly accepted by the society in an enjoyable, real-life approach while also further developing ones own attributes and qualities.
Accomplishing the ultimate goal of creating learning communities is also by itself a virtue that guides the academic workforce in continually developing personally and professionally. Self-actualization implies that the sense of fulfillment is very important for teachers even if it means to challenge the status quo. Though such conceptualization is true, there remains the fact that people can never learn all things, and people also can never learn all things inside the classroom. This old adage still holds true; however, not all teachers embraces the idea that students could learn even more outside their classrooms, with or without their presence. Establishing the learning community then not only calls for competent and well-equipped teachers but also requires the capability to instill onto the students the importance of interacting with their immediate surrounding that includes peers, neighbors, siblings, relatives, acquaintances and even nature. For teachers, personal and professional development would be futile if they could not make their students understand that learning is an imperative in their life. Imperative because learning will bequeath students to combat ignorance and illiteracy and opportunism by other people.
Such undertaking points to two things: love of teaching and love of learning. This means that building the learning community is a mutual-helping and self-helping endeavor both on the sides of teachers and students. Though the emphasis is given on the star teachers, as what we already noted that learning communities also directs on whetting non-stars to stars. Anyhow, there shall be the strike of balance on constructing and recognizing processes in encourage equal distribution of knowledge and experience between teachers and students. Apart from conforming to the spirit of communal efforts, it is but fundamental to empower both sides of the coin and locate the importance of not just teaching but also learning for teachers and locate the importance of not just learning but also educating teachers. Hence, making life long learning evident in learning communities.
As important as sharing and openness in educational institutions is the integration of the concept of community in order for students and teachers especially for non-stars to sharpen understanding of a learning community. With learning viewed to be the central activity, learning community should be a part of people’s daily existence with students hungry for learning but with less prominence of teachers hungry for power thereby star teachers. If the academic institutions and all the actors for this venture will take the effort seriously, the creation of learning communities highlights a single team: transformation. Transformation not intended for teachers and students and not for non-stars to be star teachers alone but also for the community as a whole. When we say learning community, the weight is not only inclined for star teachers and perhaps star students. There should be the greater weight to be given on the sum of all its part, the stakeholders, the community members – from the school system to homes, churches, parks, etc.
Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com
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