The Conversation Series
Daniel Zamfir:
Hosted by Pascale Mompoint-Gaillard
When I witness authentic relationships between teachers and students my heart opens up. This is why I was interested to have a conversation with Daniel. I have continuously, for the past 4-5 years, been pleasantly surprised to see how, and how often, his students celebrate him and implicitly express their recognition that they feel they are ‘real’ in Daniel’s eyes.
A student is a person, and you as a teacher have to see that person and not ‘that student’…
You have to see what that person offers to you.
That is why, when I started the conversation with Daniel, I thought we would speak about how to develop authentic relationships and congruence (C. Rogers, 1969) in relationships with students… But that’s not what Daniel wanted to speak about! Although he agrees about authenticity, instead he wants to tell us about how he has transformed his job into a passion.
Daniel tells us that he has developed his job as teacher into a mission as teacher by cultivating his passion for debate: he integrates debate in every single topic he teaches.
He feels that in 15 years of teaching he has met 10 different generations! Today he feels that he is in the midst of meeting the all-digital generation: the young people he spends his schooldays with are innovative, thoughtful, and active-in-the-moment.
As a teacher, Daniel expresses his need to adapt his methods, thoughts and feelings to the generations. He is therefore now deploying efforts to be very active as well as to meet youngsters where they dwell.
Daniel gives us three pieces of advice:
- set a dream (what changes would turn your job into a passion?)
- set the steps to reach the dream
- be prepared all the time
- upgrade all the time
Quite a contemporary creed! Thank you Daniel.
We hope you will enjoy, be inspired and learn from this conversation.
And, if you would like to have a conversation, get in touch!
