Being an Atenean teacher and counsellor, I firmly believe that duties and responsibilities should not only be taken with competence but, among other things, with conscience. But, what is conscience? What makes a conscientious person? What characterizes a conscientious teacher?
Dictionaries would be rich in definitions of what conscience and conscientious mean yet the best and most enduring meaning of these words lie in the human heart. Culturally-diverse we are, we may have varying belief systems that implicate on our conception of what conscience is and where it arises from. However, most would agree that conscience is associated to goodness and is, practically, that which drives us to act on things based on this goodness.
A conscientious person, therefore, is a person who contemplates on situations and acts on them with utmost desire for and commitment to what is good. Since good is a huge term, as a teacher and counsellor, I like to define it as that which promotes a person's dignity and that which allows him/her the opportunity to grow positively and actualize his/her great potentials. Isn't it what we are here for?
As a young blood in education, I feel my satisfaction is highly correlated to how far I pave to whoever I am working with the avenue to express and understand oneself thereby encouraging him/her to love and value the self more. It is when I fail to achieve this that I feel dissatisfied with my work. This is how I personally experience conscience in my career.
There are other ways through which we, teachers and counsellors, become more conscientious in our vocations:
Dictionaries would be rich in definitions of what conscience and conscientious mean yet the best and most enduring meaning of these words lie in the human heart. Culturally-diverse we are, we may have varying belief systems that implicate on our conception of what conscience is and where it arises from. However, most would agree that conscience is associated to goodness and is, practically, that which drives us to act on things based on this goodness.
A conscientious person, therefore, is a person who contemplates on situations and acts on them with utmost desire for and commitment to what is good. Since good is a huge term, as a teacher and counsellor, I like to define it as that which promotes a person's dignity and that which allows him/her the opportunity to grow positively and actualize his/her great potentials. Isn't it what we are here for?
As a young blood in education, I feel my satisfaction is highly correlated to how far I pave to whoever I am working with the avenue to express and understand oneself thereby encouraging him/her to love and value the self more. It is when I fail to achieve this that I feel dissatisfied with my work. This is how I personally experience conscience in my career.
There are other ways through which we, teachers and counsellors, become more conscientious in our vocations:
- self-evaluation - rethinking our desires and actions that influence our learners' / clients' dignity
- self-exploration - finding what gifts and talents we have that can inspire others
- self-nurturing - cultivating our knowledge and skills to support our vocation
- contemplation - constantly reflecting on ourselves and our experiences to gain greater insights
- rejoicing - acknowledging our achievements and more importantly our learners'/clients' progress
- valuing - making judgments based on moral and ethical principles
We shall be addressing these processes in succeeding articles but, at this point, let's pause for a while and ask ourselves: How do I define conscience? How conscientious I am in my vocation? What else can I do to add more conscience in the way I perform my duties and responsibilities?
If we are able to answer these questions, we get closer to becoming conscientious thus we get closer to achieving our purpose, not just as teachers and counsellors, but as persons. By doing so, we feel our efforts are not wasted and, with or without others' recognition, we feel more satisfied with what we do.
