New Routes

The reflective teacher: Be like water – Daniel Shiro

“You must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip and it can crash. Become like water my friend.” – Bruce Lee

When Bruce said that, he was talking about martial arts. He believed that a martial artist needs to adapt to his opponents and to the context. As I child and teenager, I used to admire Bruce Lee for his films. Later, I came to realise that what made him a legend was not the fact that he starred films. What makes his a legend is what he did as a learner, researcher and teacher. He was not afraid to ask people to teach him their techniques and he was not afraid of experimenting with new techniques from different martial arts styles – including boxing.

Since we are living what many would call the Post-communicative era, when teachers are expected to be flexible and adapt to their contexts and to the individual needs of their learners, I truly believe that Bruce Lee’s concept can actually apply to our own context: Sticking to one method or one approach seems far from what we need and we need to have some freedom to experiment with new approaches and techniques.

I also believe that the context in which ideas such as Dogme and Demand High were able to emerge is a result of what learners expect and need from us teachers. Learners have become more demanding; they have plenty of options of how to learn a language; they are constantly bombarded by advertisements from language institutions, apps and so on. Many teachers find it difficult to know what to expect from these learners and what is expected from them. If you see yourself in this position, here are 5 things you can do to start with:

Learn as much as possible: increase your repertoire of teaching techniques and activities. It is easier to adapt if you know how and why. Don’t be afraid to ask for help or to ask other teachers why they teach the way they do.

Be open to feedback: it will help you guide you and show you the changes you need to make. Ask for feedback from you peers, coordinator and learners. By comparing what is expected from you to what you expect to deliver will help you adjust your teaching. However, have in mind that not all feedback will be positive and you should reflect on why it is not.

Adapt: small changes will show what works best and doesn’t. Conduct small experiments and reach your own conclusions. However, remember that you don’t actually have to re-invent the wheel. The idea is to find small changes that could improve your teaching and your results.

Discuss: getting people’s opinions on teaching and sharing your own can lead to mutual growth. You might

learn a thing or two about your own beliefs as a teacher. Learning what others think can help you understand how much you know and how much you need to learn.

Choose useful techniques from different approaches: get what you think works best from different approaches and use them in your lessons. See what you can learn from them. This is what Bruce Lee decided to do once he realised his style of Kung Fu was not as effective as he thought it should be.

Remember that being flexible does not mean doing things willy-nilly – without careful reflection. You must go through a cycle of reflection, action and reflection again. Once if becomes part of your routine, you’ll see that you can never go back to doing things without asking yourself ‘why’.

To conclude, making change is never easy but it’s part of the process of growing as a professional and a person. It’s what makes our profession so fascinating – even when faced with so many challenges. So, if you ever find that making changes is difficult, if you ever feel you’ve hit a wall, remember Bruce Lee’s words:

“Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.” – Bruce Lee.

Be like water, my friend. Be a reflective teacher.