Teaching and Mountaineering

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Teaching and Mountaineering Teaching as Mountaineering, written by Nancy K. Hill, a US teacher and author explores quite a few popular analogies as a way to establish the idea that teaching should be best compared to mountaineering, which requires joint efforts of both the guide and the participants. A teacher has long been referred to as a candle, a gardener, a shepherd or a researcher. However, after reading this essay, I tend to agree with the author that mountaineering serves as an apt analogy for the art of teaching. To begin with, the success of a class not only depends on a teacher’s leading ability but also the close cooperation of each other. Surely, a teacher must be authoritative enough to convince his students, but he also should have the power to make his students willing to participate in the class. He must realize that it does not do to feel superior to his students. Instead, he and his students should work together, like a mountaineer and his group members. To make it possible, a teacher should first respect his students and let them feel free to air their own points of view on various matters. The aim of teaching should not be to make the students regard their teacher as dictators and fear him. Furthermore, a teacher is supposed to connect his subject with other related courses as well as the lives of the students. Just as Nancy said, during the expedition, the guide rope links mountaineers together so that they may assist each other in the ascent. Each subject or course is not independent. Instead, knowledge from different fields is usually related to each other. If the teacher can often combine new knowledge with the old one and connect what is learned in the class with students’ daily life, their comprehension and memory can be enhanced. Last but not least, teaching should advance with the times. It is true that the guide of the

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