英语演讲 (我的教师情怀)

A battle between a dream and reality

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. It’s a great honor to speak here. Today, my title is ‘A battle between dreams and reality’.

When I was in the kindergarten, I had a dream. I wanted to be a professor in Harvard, even though I had no idea about it. I thought it was cool because everyone around told me that was a wonderful place. When I was in the primary school, my dream was to be a teacher. I believed that standing on the platform and writing on the blackboard was interesting. When I was in the secondary school, I just wanted to have a job that could afford my live. But it couldn’t be as a teacher in school. And when eventually I got into the university, the normal university, I felt something horrible that happened to me. Since I had seen how depressed my teachers were and how they were made to be crazy.

How pathetic! The meaning of teacher is changing with my age. Why? Why does a beautiful dream of a child become a nightmare? As far as I know, many teenagers do not want to study in normal university. And a large number of students graduating from normal university do not come into the classrooms. This is a typical phenomenon in China’s education.

Maybe teaching is a battle between dreams and reality. Now, I become an English teacher for more than two years. I always trouble in different kinds of trivial things. This is my reality which is totally far away from my sweet dream. However, I gain another kind of happiness, which differs from superior feeling but comfort my heart. How to make our dreams

win in this battle? I think it is not complaint. It is not escape, either. The point is to be a student as the children.

Han Yu once said: “Pupils are not necessarily inferior to their teachers, nor teachers better than their pupils”—that is a truth, not a fallacy. Sometimes I feel tired because I look myself to be different from my students. I want to emphasize my social status but forget the nature of education. Actually, there is no impassable demarcation line between teacher and students. While a teacher may be superior to his students in one branch of knowledge, the latter may be superior to the former in another. While the teacher may be superior to his students today, the latter may be superior to the former tomorrow. The students should learn from his teacher, but sometimes there may also be something the teacher has to learn from his students. If I don’t put myself in a high place, I will find more happiness in teaching.

To be a teacher, one must at the same time be a student, or be a student first, just as Carl Marx says, “Educators must themselves be educated first.” Though this is plain truth, yet people in their practical life seldom recognize it.

So, I think keeping my sweet dream is not difficult. Only do I treat my students in an equal way. They will help me fulfill our dream. And my dream will defeat the reality. Thank you very much.