¡The teacher we need, the teacher we have!

Adults, men, women and children from all walks of life, with different likes, needs

and interest, on the lookout for new experiences or maybe not yet with any life

project, all live in Colombia. They go to English class and wait for the magic that

will let them communicate in English. Why? They’re not sure, but they are aware

of the technological revolution, globalization and other challenges that are difficult if

not impossible to master without English.

While other subjects are of course important in professional and academic life,

English is different. English is used to obtain knowledge; it is goal and process,

aim and tool. Because of its criticality, its duality, the role of the English teacher is

being constantly questioned. As English teachers, we constantly ask “What is the

objective of our classes? What books should we use? What are the best

resources for our classes? What is the best way to evaluate students, processes

and skills? How should we design tests? Are they even necessary? Do we really

know the answers? Maybe the student, who may know better, should be given the

opportunity.

Perhaps this is the reason that in Colombia, as in the rest of the world, a new

method was encouraged: students must learn by themselves. Schools and

universities accepted the challenge “to guarantee the survival of a variable

environment, with the capacity of being adapted and integrated to that setting in a

creative way and learning continuously” (Colciencias1994:52). However, the

results were not always successful because teachers knew how to teach a

language but not how to teach students to learn. Some assumed that the learning

process was the student’s responsibility. A new curriculum and a new

methodology has been required.

Who is responsible for creating and developing the curriculum? Some

professionals from different disciplines might say that it is the responsibility of

educational institutions and teachers. But that cannot be the case for an English

program. Students must be involved because language is how they express their

world, their thoughts and feelings.

They need to understand why teachers do what they do in class, how it is relevant,

and how to improve by themselves. Students learn, as Stenhouse in Posner

(1999) says “, through their own experience in the world, taking what they know, so

they can think and understand the world instead of repeating it.” Students must not

just be taught repetition of words, sentences, knowledge.

They must be taught how to repeat procedures, to learn more outside the class

than in it. For this, the English student needs a secure teacher, autonomous, with

high self-esteem, able to follow his or her own life project as tutor and professional

and able to lead students to their own way of learning, making them autonomous

learners.

These teachers have emphasized that, in the words of Little (1990) in Benson

(2001), “Autonomy is not self –instruction or learning without a teacher; it does not

forbid intervention or initiative on the part of the teacher and it is not something that

teachers do to learners.” They provide students with tools for them to steadily begin

control over their learning. That’s the teacher our students need; that’s the teacher

Autonoma University has.