How can teachers deal with the different perceptions that students have inside the classroom?

Outline:

1. What is the book about?
- Brief summary
- Personal understanding about Chapter 1, Ways of Seeing

2. How can we take this understanding into the classroom in order to help our students’ learning?

3. Conclusion.


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The main idea of this essay is how, we as teachers, can relate what the Chapter 1 of the book “Ways of Seeing” by John Berger, says with our pedagogical practice inside the schools. For the ones that have not read this chapter I am going to write a brief summary and then I am going to relate the chapter with our pedagogical practice, according to my personal interpretation.

One of the main ideas in this chapter is that the way we see is affected by what we know, what we believe and what we feel, because we have our own perception of things, we have our own point of view of everything and it is created through our lives experiences. As we are different persons, no one has had the same experiences that you, because we are independent persons with different thought, ideas and feelings.

In simpler words, when we look at a photograph we are looking at the “photographer’s way of seeing”. But the perception or interpretation of that image, photograph or painting, depends also on our own experiences, feelings and beliefs.

Another important thing that the chapter talks about is that “seeing comes before words”, which means that we have to see and then explain what we have seen in our own words. For example, a child sees before she is able to speak and when she does, she speaks what she has seen in her life or what she is seeing in the world, but what she says is her own perception of things, because, as I said before, that little child has her own feelings, thoughts and ideas.


After read this and have an idea of what the chapter says, we can infer that what it is trying to explain is that every person has different perceptions and beliefs, which means that we learn in different ways, in other words, we have different strategies and styles in order to learn something.

Some teachers teach in one way using just one method, because they think that all the students learn in the same way, however they do not realized that all the students learn differently. They have different methods, to some students is easier to learn by seeing, other by listening, writing or using many other methods that we create according to our personality and learning styles.

We as teachers have the necessity to be aware of our students’ needs, in order to develop their skills in a better way and improve their knowledge. Doing this we are not just helping them in improve their learning in our subject, but we are helping them in other subjects too, because once they know which are their learning methods and styles, is easier for them study, because they know how they have to study in order to facilitate their learning in every subject. Knowing this they can create different strategies to learn.


As a conclusion I can say that, if we want to be great teachers, we have the necessity to keep in mind that every person learn in different ways, that when we are in front of a class we have forty five different persons with different lives, thoughts, ideas, feelings and experiences. Thus, we have to create classes using different methods, because that way we can have the attention of everybody in the classroom and their learning is going to be easier, due to we are teaching them according to their different learning methods and styles.

We also have to help them to develop a critical thinking, due to they need to have their own opinion about different things, especially about what they do and the mistakes that they make. If they say something wrong in class, we have to give them the opportunity to analyze their mistakes, but we have to do it in a nice way, because if we interrupt them while they are speaking they can be embarrased and can take the decision to not speak again in class. If they learn to analyze themselves and accept the teacher’s opinion in a good way, they are going to be able to make their own conclusion about their errors and, the most important thing, correct them the next time that they are going to use the same structure.
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Sources:

- http://toefl-essays.blogspot.com/2007/05/people-learn-in-different-ways.html
- John Berger, "Ways of Seeing".1972