Teachers Need To Create Magic

Inspirational Wednesday is presenting you with a talk on teaching teachers how to create magic. At first this sounds quite confusing, trying to grasp exactly what is implied. Today’s presenter Christopher Emdin a science advocate emphasizes on the approaches of captivating an audience when teaching.

In my opinion teachers have a crucial role to play in society, because they are in a position to provide learners with valuable knowledge but more importantly they have the ability to serve as role models to students. Although teaching has advanced tremendously with the aid of technology, teachers must develop their teaching skills to appeal more to their audience.

Teaching needs to adapt in such a way that will captivate students. This can be achieved by observing the role models which motivate these students outside of the classroom. This observation process will help understand what exactly their students are inspired by, and adopting more or less some of their actions. Christopher gives examples of how rappers and reverend’s in black churches are able to deliver effectively to their audience. This ability to deliver and capture the attention of students is magic and this is something which can be taught to teachers. Although he refers to examples which may be relevant to the students in urban schools in America, similar approaches can be adopted by any teacher anywhere. His argument for studying these individuals is to observe how they speak, how they stand, how they address their audience. Every teacher has an audience, and that teacher has a duty to deliver to that specific audience. Teachers need to revise their approach to better suit their students expectations, and this requires them to understand them by identifying their interests and who inspires them.

The concept of teaching may have remained the same more or less over the years, but audiences have changed, and if we are not adapting to times, then as teachers we will be ineffective. The conduit between teaching and delivering is what Christopher Emdin calls Magic. Take a few minutes to watch his talk.