Embracing Change

Pamela R. Ocampo

Stephen Hawking once said, “Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.” Our world is constantly changing and evolving. The new trends before were out-of-date now. The best computers and gadgets today will be obsolete after only a few months or years. We live in a world where change is constant and where everything changes in a blink of an eye. The jobs that we once seen as highly demanding no longer exist; the teaching ideas that were used for us to learn were now modified. There are new opportunities created and needed, and for us to be able to cope up with these changes we need to be flexible and adaptable as teachers. Sometimes we may not see it directly or we may not see it right away, but we are creating a great impact in shaping the minds and skills of our students.

The world is continuously changing, since we are part of it, we must also continuously cope up in these changes. These efforts that I do to address the current needs in our industry. First, I make sure that whatever changes I encounter, I am always flexible/adaptable. In a world that is always changing we know that we must find ways on how to adapt to the situations, current trends, and development in the education system. In my own perspective, an effective teacher is someone, who can work in a constantly changing environment because we know that change is constant, we need to be able to adapt in every situation. We should be able to make learning accessible anytime, anywhere. This is one way of embracing the changes in the learning environment that we have currently.

Second, I make learning personalized to each of my students. This is by making the lessons simple, giving more individual practice exercises, and using and integrating different strategies in the teaching and learning process that adapts to the needs of my students. Lastly is allowing my students to become independent in their own learning. I think that in this point in time, we should allow our students to explore and learn in their own pace and time. We teachers should only act as a facilitator in the teaching and learning process who serves as a guide to our students whenever needed. This will allow our learners to explore and to try new things on their own. With these, we are helping and preparing them in the future that we ourselves don’t know yet; we are assured that whatever it is, they are ready to face and conquer it with the help of the things that we have equipped them.

“A teacher can never truly teach unless he is still learning himself. A lamp can never light another lamp unless it continues to burn its own flame. The teacher who has come to the end of his subject, who has no living traffic with his knowledge but merely repeats his lessons to his students, can only load their minds. He cannot quicken them.” this is what Ranidranath Tagore said. Knowing that we contribute to shaping the minds of the young is both an honor and a responsibility to take. It will not be an easy journey, there will be rough roads ahead but learn to adapt to changes and continue to move forward for the reward that is waiting is something that cannot be bought by money but is felt by the heart. I believe that for us to be significant, we just need to be ourselves equipped with the right heart and clothe with passion for teaching and for our leaners. In the end, the goal is for us to make our leaners learn significantly.

The author

is Teacher

--oOo-

I at Angeles City National Trade School