Pedagogical and Technological University of Colombia

Faculty of Education Sciences

Bachelor of Modern Languages Spanish-English

Characteristics of a peacebuilder teacher

Reflective essay

Presented to Professor Yolanda Arcos de Olarte

Presented by Anyi Paola Ramírez Cala

Tunja, Boyacá

2020
 Characteristics of a peacebuilder teacher

Colombia is a country with a long history of violence and social inequality; therefore, currently

Colombian people have a lot of pain scars on their bodies and roots of hate in their hearts. This

explains why all public schools in our country, have to work with students from dysfunctional

families and victims of armed conflict with aggressive behavior. These students alter the school

balance and generate situations of violence which force us to rethink the purpose of education in

the society and the role of a teacher in the classroom.

For this, in the first instance we must take into account that education is the path to peace,

therefore, teachers must be builders of ethical and moral values. We are obliged to be integral

subjects that serve as a model for society. Thus, the concept of "teaching" goes beyond the

pedagogical discourse given in classrooms and is summarized in the daily example. In short,

classrooms must be a model of peace for humanity.

Now, taking into account the practices carried out in different public schools in the city of Tunja,

and the Práctica Pedagógica Investigativa y de Profundización carried out at the Silvino

Rodríguez Educational Institution, this essay proposes some characteristics that every teacher

must possess to become an agent of peace and change in a community. Also, this text analyzes

some aspects that influence the teaching process and determine the impact of significant

learning.

First, a teacher must be a sensitive human being capable of sensitizing his students. Indifference

is the main cause of the deterioration of humanity, people only think about their personal

problems and are not interested in social problems that do not affect a specific subject, but affect
the whole society. Education should arouse students' interest in seeking solutions to social

problems of their reality.

Gutiérrez, A. Herrera, L. Bernabé, M and Silvano, J. (2016) point out that there can be no effort

to learn, if a student does not accept the problem of a subject that needs to be learned as him

responsibility. Hence, the importance that the teacher not only dominates the scientific

knowledge but also can design a learning situation by articulating the problems of the context

with knowledge. Moreover, teachers must have a sense of belonging to their environment, this

implies that they have to assume the search of solutions to the context problems as a

responsibility of their profession.

Second, a teacher must be a permanent reader and an avid listener, It means that he needs to read

his students (how they behave in specific situations, what are their interests, what is their attitude

during class time and rest time), his context (social classes, age of the population he works with,

physical condition of classrooms) and to read himself (strengths, weaknesses, talents,

disabilities), between other aspects. Likewise, the teacher must first be willing to listen before

speaking because listening allows him to understand the behavior of his students and know what

they want to express.

In other words, “without an education for listening, which leads the student and the teacher as

discursive subjects to opt for an ethical and political stance through their listening attitude

towards teaching and learning, it is unlikely that there will be pedagogical communication and an

experience of democracy in the classroom, and that without listening attitude all work in the

classroom is useless for the educational purposes of human and social development. (Motta,

2017)”
Third, the teacher must be an agile speaker, he must know how to use the language and select the

most appropriate words to express himself, so the attitude, tone, and vocabulary that the teacher

uses both in the classroom and at recess they will influence in the imaginary that the student

creates of his teacher. Likewise, teachers must be an interceding in problematic situations, in

other words, we must develop a communicative ability to solve problems, in fact dialogue is the

key to achieving peace. The teacher, in any of his spheres of performance, must constitute a

model of idiomatic expression, at the same time that he must be the bearer of a general culture

that serves as an example to be imitated by his students, taking into account that language

constitutes the medium through which is carried out the process of education and teaching of the

new generations (Peréz,2017).

Fourth, the teacher must be a persistent explorer, he must never assume that students should

know something because the starting point of all learning is prior knowledge. When we explorer

about what students know we approach better to their reality. With regard to academics, the

teacher must be descriptive in his explanations and give specific examples. If the student

understands what he has to do, he will be interested in learn it.

Fifth, the teacher must be a constructivist mediator between students and knowledge, who seeks

to alter the worldview of students. This implies developing skills in students that allow them to

develop critical thinking and have the ability to accept contrary opinions without feeling

offended. In addition, to defend their ideals with arguments without making fun of other beliefs.

When students do not question their reality and do not question themselves, they have not

understood the true meaning of learning. For this reason, Colombian education should point to

meaningful learning, teach students to think critically, which allows finding peace in different
thinking ways. Moreover, it should be borne in mind that learning occurs when what the student

already knows conflicts with what he should know. (Díaz - Barriga and Hernández, 2002).

Sixth, the teacher must be an accessible person who work as a team with his students and

encourage love and respect for the other. Learning is bidirectional and is facilitated by mediation

or interaction with others. Thus, the peace is possible when is possible to stablish stable relations

with others.

Finally, the teacher must be a contextual pedagogue, that is, he should use the context as the

main teaching strategy. Thinking about education implies reviewing the cultural rules that

govern a specific community. Therefore, the teacher must use teaching strategies according to

the needs of the student. Likewise, the socioeconomic conditions in which the school is located

and the students are from, influence the perception that students have of life, of success and of

their future, since learning is a process of reconstruction of cultural knowledge.

In conclusion, educating is a reciprocal action, that is, both the teacher and the student learn from

each other. In most of the time the teacher teaches with intention, while the student becomes an

unintended teacher. In other words, teachers constantly learn from the student, without the

student being aware that he is teaching to his teacher. Therefore, peace consists in learning from

the other.
References
Diaz - Barriga, F., & Hernández, G. (2002). Estrategias docentes para un aprendizaje
significativo: una interpretación constructivista (2° ed.). México.
Gutiérrez, A. Herrera, L. Bernabé, M and Silvano, J. (2016). Problemas de contexto: un camino
al cambio educativo. Revista Ra Ximhai: Universidad Autónoma Indígena de México, vol. 12,
núm. 6, pp. 227-239. México.
Motta, J. (2017). La actitud de escucha, fundamento de la comunicación y la democracia en el
aula. Cuadernos de Lingüística Hispánica núm. 30, pp. 149-169. Colombia.
Pérez, Y. (2017). La competencia comunicativa del docente en el ámbito escolar.
Transformación, 13(3), pp 394-405. Recuperado de http://scielo.sld.cu/scielo.p
hp?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2077-29552017000300009&lng=es&tlng=es.