Effort and teaching "recipes"!

What Peter Westwood and Wendy Arnold summarize in the report “Meeting Individual Needs” is the idea of how a teacher should act when knowing the differences and particularities of all of his/her students. It can sound like a simple issue but if we look at it carefully, difficulties easily appear. Should we adapt each activity or should students try to do the tasks even when the teacher knows that they are not prepared? Personally, I consider that we can’t hide obvious lacks of knowledge or aptitudes. As a teacher, I think that I have the responsibility of taking care of those children that are in my class and that involves teaching contents but also trying to understand how they feel and why they act the way they do.  It’s not like making students do tasks that are ready to do and that are easy for them. It’s taking into account all of the learning styles, backgrounds and knowledge so that when the teacher plans his/her methodology for that year he/she has enough information, resources and strategies to do his/her job as a teacher properly.

It starts from changing the view that we’re used to have about the roles in class. Students don’t need to be afraid of if they are going to understand the way teacher explains or evaluate. Now, our task is to make it become more bidirectional: students must do an effort to get to what their teacher expects from them but also the teacher needs to be professional enough so he/she creates his/her own “recipe” that works in class.