TRADITIONAL TEACHING OR 21ST CENTURY TEACHING SKILLS

The author is Head Teacher

ROMEL M. LUSUNG

Even before the K to 12 Basic Education Curriculum had started, the Department of Education has been urging teachers to be equipped with the 21st century teaching skills which is a learner centered education. With the latest trend in technology today, teachers have the access to use different technology like computers, multimedia, audio-visual presentation, etc. Public school teachers have the means to use technology in teaching in order to make learning easier, engaging, and enjoyable for the students.

As a department head, I have been observing teachers for a while now not only in my department but with other subject areas as well. I have seen teachers who resort to teaching in a traditional way, using Manila papers with all the lectures in the learning modules requiring the students to copy what’s written on it. After finishing the lecture for the day, a discussion will follow. This is a strategy that is being utilized by some teachers until now. With all the seminars, workshops, in-service trainings, etc., the teachers have attended to, some still resort to this conventional way of teaching.

I have heard one professor who said that we have long killed the traditional way of teaching but still comparing it to 21st century teaching skills when conducting research. The result is that the latter is obviously the effective strategy while the traditional way is already obsolete.

But why are teachers still using the traditional way? Do the students perform better academically with this old method? In my point of view, teachers who are using the old way of teaching tend to use manila papers and markers than to use computers and multimedia presentation because preparing and bringing it inside the classroom is tedious. But remember that as a teacher, we need to be flexible and keep up with the generation of the students that we have. We have to go back to our mission and vision that we need to produce learners who are globally competitive and ready to take the challenge and demand of this world. Like a gazelle who is running fast from a chasing lion, we need to keep up with the 21st century skills in order to meet the learner’s needs in this generation and cope with this modern world – a world of globally competent people.

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I at Doña Asuncion Lee Integrated School