Partnerships are highly important, and if we are to apply their solid concepts to our lives, a philosophical approach must be applied to them as well. If you have been someone who’s educating people, regardless of the workforce from which you belong, you need to engage in habitual team-ups with other workers of your kind.
This is because no matter how smart or skilled you are, there will always be a need to replenish or reinforce your innate capabilities. Books, printed research papers, and the internet can greatly help you in attaining almost any kind of knowledge, but they will never be enough to supplement the priceless life-lessons that you can attain if you tap into the partnerships you may get hooked up with.
Solidifying Your Teaching Philosophy
This is one of the most important philosophies an educator must have: being open to outward inputs from other people of the same profession, no matter how advanced you are compared to them.
Philosophy can be simply understood as one’s love for learning. It is actually derived from the Greek words “Philos” and “Sophia”, which literally means “love of wisdom.”
As an educator who wishes to emphasize the great love that must be possessed for learning, you have to consider partnerships through technological means to be very important. We often hear these popular statements: “No man is an island” and “It’s not good for man to be alone.” While we may think of them as “cliché one-liners”, we can never dispute the undying truths within such statements.
The most successful individuals in any endeavor you might think of are highly driven people. Why they became great at any chosen field is due to their rock-solid adherence to the principles that they established early on. They drew a map, not a literal one, but the type of map that gets the going since they started, and up until they achieved the success they hoped for.
An educator like you must not think differently. If you aren’t sure yet what your core philosophies are, it would be truly wise to solidify them now.
Treating Your Students Like Your Own Family
If we are to ask any experienced teacher from any school, one of the best ways to establish a teacher-student connection is to craft a special bond between the 2 parties. Aside from just treating the students as clients that pay the institution so that the latter can pay your salary, treating the young minds like your own children or younger sibling would really be helpful.
It does have some disadvantages. For one, it could make them become too close to you which could lead to you feeling their pains, whenever they do occur. It could really mess up your private life. But it is just a very small price to pay in exchange for a very prolific relationship.
In any type of relationships, we may think of, treating your peers or partners as a true family is always applicable. No matter how great or highly educated you are in your profession, you always need to learn from other people as well, even those who you might consider as way beneath you in terms of educational attainment. As a teacher, you have to make yourself sound and appear like a wise father or a truly caring mother.
The best way to do that is to treat the participants in your class as a family. After all, that’s what being a family life educator is really all about.
Utilizing Technology To Enhance Professional Ties
Now. with the existence of digital technology, finding such quality partnerships shouldn’t be very hard to find. Today, even some old-fashioned teachers are utilizing social-media pages to further the implementation of their teaching methods. In some countries, schools that make substantial use of technology to improve teaching have been labeled as “smart schools” – they are now becoming the ultimate learning institutions for the technologically savvy kids of today.
Such facts are very relevant to digital-age partnerships that are taking place within schools and various social circle groups today. Friendships are nurtured and cultivated by technology, we can be very sure of that. As someone whose job is highly related to education, technology must be utilized and leveraged as well, knowing full well that my methods can only be further emphasized and solidified if my students can get to connect with me through e-mail and social media chat groups.
It can be highly observed that some shy-introvert students seldom pour out themselves in the open. Many of them resort to expressing themselves through writing down letters, or journals. Some of them often opt to pour their hearts out on social media walls and news feeds.
In a study conducted at Lincoln College, Oxford, it has been discovered that: “Adolescents’ use of social networking sites has been found to enhance existing friendships and the quality of relationships, although some individuals benefit more than others.
The general finding is that those who use social networks to avoid social difficulties have reduced wellbeing, while the use of social networks to deal with social challenges improves outcomes.”
Conclusion
Technology is really making this world surprisingly and terrifyingly small. Consequently, friendships and human connection become handier and more accessible too. Such a concept clearly has lots of advantages. An educator today can never expect to become the best at what he does if he won’t utilize technology to make the most out of his methods.
In teaching about family life, a teacher must treat his students like family. And since the learners are not really under the same roof like that as the teacher’s, they have to be within reach at all times still, with the use of digital networking technology. They are just lying around in the open, waiting for us to use them. We should take advantage of them to the fullest to make the most out of the learning points that we wish to absorb in our pursuit of knowledge.
If it’s hard for you to establish partnerships within your real-world social circle, then utilize technology to build them. Technology is widely accessible to anyone especially for educators like you. Use it to your advantage. It will provide you with the best leverage that can be crucial to boosting your career to greater heights.
