Kalil SEMAIDI

  As an educator, teaching is building relationships with your students. Once students know you care about them, they are much more likely to engage. One way to help develop a positive relationship with your students is to share some of your own interests with the class. This helps your students connect to you as a person, and not just their teacher. By sharing your non-art interests with students, you become more relatable as students may find you share common interests. This also goes with the staff I work with.

Based on my experience, I have worked a lot on the social and cultural development of the students. Students should understand that they are part of the society they live in through involving in community service projects/activities, project citizen activities to make an active contribution to the democratic process in each of their communities. Engage students to different cultures could appreciate and respond to a variety of aesthetic experiences. In terms of morals, students should acquire an understanding of the difference between right and wrong and of moral conflict, a concern for others and the will to do what is right. They are able and willing to reflect on the impacts of their actions and learn how to forgive themselves and others. They develop the knowledge, skills and understanding, qualities and attitudes they need in order to make responsible moral decisions and act on them.

     I love teaching; though it is not an easy career. English and Portuguese are my native languages. I used to have a Colombian student in class who never abided by the instructions of any Interactive Listening/Speaking activity; the problem was that he didn’t want to get engaged believing that his classmates would make fun of his accent. I used to give them a written passage to be read for 10 minutes, Then, a group of five students should answer 5 questions in a form of a debate. He (the Colombian student) used to turn his back to his classmates, to murmur, and to give me hard time. The issue is that he had to pass this activity to move up to the second level. The second time and to solve the problem, I turned up to be one of the five students in the group to answer the questions and have a debate with them, but I had to speak English with an accent (Portuguese). At the beginning, it was weird for the students, but I made him listen and speak and get engaged in the debate. Well, it is not bad at all to have an accent.