Can we change the world from the classroom?

It is not necessary to go deep in the subject to realize that the reality of the classroom is becoming harder. This is, of course , related to the fact that society is becoming harder. Nowadays in the classroom we find a variety of situations that hinder learning as we know it: teachers trying to teach a foreign language when students have difficulties even with manipulating their own mother tongue; teachers who are afraid of being robbed at the end of the lesson, cases of suicides, violence, poverty, and so on.

As educators, we have two alternatives; either to lie on the “there’s-nothing-I-can-do” side, and act as robots, repeating routines until our retirement; or take a more optimistic attitude and think that we can, at least, make a small contribution to our students.

Evidently, it is easier to take the first alternative. Keeping an optimistic perspective is a challenge and not all teachers are willing to respond to it. A challenge implies a potential risk:  teachers are likely to feel frustrated for not reaching the results they expect. But in order not to give up we must be aware that, more often than not, we won’t be able to see instant results. This shouldn’t demotivate us: we must be convinced that even the smallest action will have an effect on, at least, one of our students and that we can make the difference.

I also think we should set realistic goals. We cannot expect to change the world in the blink of an eye. Maybe instead of thinking of “Changing the World” we should think of “changing our students’ world”.  Being realistic also means that we should be happy to know that we could help at least one of our students. 

That’s how we can start making the difference

Here are some motivational quotes that I loved ! I hope you like them: