2. Self-fulfillment

How can we help our students reach their potential to the fullest?

“Self fulfillment is defined as the ability to make yourself happy and complete through your own efforts.”

Self-fulfillment is the most important purpose of education. As teachers, we want our students to be successful. We teachers must squeeze our students’ potential, and must help them succeed little by little. Sometimes students think they do not have potentials at all, and our job consists on making our students discover their abilities and talents.

Everybody is good at something, so they are not the exception. Great teachers really believe in their students and in their potential. We need to challenge our students to do their best in activities such as homework assignments, group works, and exams among others. Teaching can be view as holistic. The simplest acts of teaching and the well-chosen words of a teacher constitute spiritual action. The message is that we as teachers can attain these lofty goals if we have the will to seek them.

“A concern for issues that affect the human spirit is an integral part of a teachers’ calling” Teachers with courage to believe they can connect to the transcendent can realize goals beyond the academic and even the social. “Teachers who contribute to encouraging students to desire lives of fulfillment meet a most worthy teaching goal” We can help our students to reach their potentials by believing in them. We, teachers, need to be “transformers”.

Transformational teaching is a higher standard for teachers, and it places more demands on learners’ potential. We must help our students to identify their personal strengths, to identify their areas of personal interests, to identify how they learn best; moreover, we need to help them to set academic goals incorporating their strengths, interests, learning style and personal ability. We need to teach them the skills they need to achieve their goals: organization, planning, study skills, self-discipline, etc.

We as teachers should consider spiritual goals as an integral part of teaching and learning because motivation and hope are part of the spiritual goal dimension. “For our purposes we choose simplicity: Transformation is an illuminating change in head and heart that helps learners achieve their potential and their purpose.” Head and heart work together to animate who we are. Belief in the human spirit’s potential can include the world of how teachers think about, perceive, and relate to their students; and illumination, whether intellectual or spiritual, can include how learners feel inside as a positive response to their teachers’ belief in them. There must be trust and respect in the relationship between teacher and student. 

How can we, teachers, be a source of inspiration to our students?

We teachers can be a source of inspiration for our students by being great teachers. We have to do our best every day, and we have to be good models for our students. We need to be a good inspiration for our pupils to make tremendous changes in their lives. “WE MUST TEACH TO INSPIRE. LEARNERS NEED THE INSPIRATION OF TEACHERS TO FIND AND REACH PURPOSE IN LIFE.”