The teacher’s enthusiasm

Abstract

Social relations are often seen as transactions between individuals. The dynamic teacher, accordingly, is one who gives energy and knowledge to students. Because this understanding fails to appreciate the relational forces at work in the lively classroom, it produces unhealthy attitudes toward education. Teachers who try to live up to it will not only burn out, they will distort their students’ educational development. The vitality of the classroom comes from an energy that is created between teachers and students; it is an energy in which both teachers and students share, but for which neither is individually responsible. The successful teacher must be able to receive if they are to be able to give. This argument is advanced using interviews with Australian teachers and students, all of whom were asked to describe the teachers who changed their lives.