Tools for educators or educators as tools?

     It's the beginning of a new school year and teachers all over the world start the ride of searching for new tools and equipment. All of us open our drawers, clean our bookcases, surf the internet, willing to explore and discover new useful links, learn about newly printed coursebooks, find out what are the latest trends in teaching, refresh our approaches and get ready to open our hands and give a big hug to our students that will open the classroom door on the first days of September. 

    And it is while I am searhing for my listening-activities-CDs, in front of a laptop looking for esl links,next to a pile of handouts and arts and crafts that a phrase I recently heard from a colleague keeps coming to me : "There was a power cut at school this morning, so I got totally out of track, I could not practice anytrhing I had planned to."  In answer to my question of what it was that she had planned to do,she said she had prepared a lesson based on a song and she needed  a CD player so the learners could listen to it. So simple but ruined as there was no way for her to play the song without electricity.

   I could not hide my surprise to the fact that the solution to what she considered as a huge problem seemed so obvious to me. "Why didn't YOU sing the song? " I asked. " Me? Sing the song? But...But..."...Too many "buts" appeared. "Buts" about her voice that is not so nice, about the fact that no music would be heard and many more. And it is because of all these "buts" that I cannot help but wonder : When are we,teachers, going realise to that the only tool we need in order to teach effectively is just ourself?

   Sounds selfish? Perhaps..but it is ourself offered to our learners, our skills used in such a way to facilitate the learning process that can make a difference. Our own skills, no matter how well we use them. That is, we don't need to have the voice of  an opera singer to sing in our classroom,nor the dancing abilities of Michael Jackson or John Travolta to dance in front our students and help them enjoy the activity. Our students will forgive (or will not even care about) some cute clumsiness they may see in us when we try to become fun for them. All they probably want from us is to be authentic,really believe in what we do and , most importantly, give our own special something to our lesson that is found in our personality and nothing that is non-human can give.Each one of us is unique and have their own special something.As students detect it, they can become really happy if we give it to them.

  My feeling is that we should start relying on ourselves a little more and start asking ourselves to use skills that our learners need. We can sing, dance, paly music-not necessarily with an "official" musical instrument, playing music can be clapping hands on a rythm and knocking on the desk with our pen- use our facial expressions and body to pantomime vocabulary, dramatise a story and so many more. It's all on ourselves. WE are the tool and we should be willing to make use of ourselves, trust them and rely on them, in the same way we rely on flashcards or websites and videos. I'm not saying not to make use of the latter, of course, but why so much reliance on everything else but our own abilities to become an alive and (hopefully-not) kicking visual aid?  

  In view of the new school year, then, let's refresh our tools and materials from all kinds of resources, but let's give ourselves a chance. While looking for tools outside, let's take some time to wake up some skills from inside. 'Cause it's about waking them up, not creating them. They are there, and always have been. We were just too busy looking for teaching tools everywhere else that did not hear them calling.