An Educator’s Legacy
Marius Antonius L. Galay
As a teacher and an educator, my question for you is, What legacy are you leaving behind? In this article, my goal is to reignite passion and drive to improve the status quo of the quality given by teachers in the academe. I would like to expound on a statement given by Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist, author, planetary scientist, and the director of Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space in New York City.
“My impact would be, people learn from me in a way that they are empowered by what I taught them. So that when they think of what they learned from me, they no longer think of me. They think of their own base of understanding of how this world works and so that I become irrelevant.”
Let us dissect his answer on the question, What is the impact you want to have in the world? Tyson is a life-long learner, he is very particular about teaching youngsters to develop a keen sense of curiosity in everything. He used the word “empowered”, according to Oxford Languages empowered is from the root word power from AngloNorman French poeir, from an alteration of Latin posse meaning ‘be able’. In essence, he wants his demographic to be able to do things by themselves, to possess abilities, skills, and capabilities in order to flourish in their own field. In his answer, he also removed himself from the equation, not taking credit for the knowledge and wisdom he has injected to his learners. As a teacher, I was moved by that statement for the reason being, I also feel the same exact way. I want my students to develop a hunger for learning, I want them to grow organically so that whenever they see something that sparks their interest they will not cease to find out the intricacies of that certain thing. The last sentence in the quote the learners now know the basics and fundamentals of learning, meaning if they do not understand something they are inclined to find answers.
Developing life-long learners is a great feat to be done by us teachers but let us not stop there. Let us also produce problem solvers, creative thinkers, and promethean innovators.
The author is Teacher
--oOo-
II at San Fernando Elementary School