Classrooms in the Age of Rockets & Robots

By Jay R Delfin

This book discusses the cultural and linguistic gap between today’s generation of teachers and their highly digital students who rely on (and trust) their social networks for answers to day-to-day questions.


For teachers to succeed in their job they must cross that cultural divide; they must acquire the knowledge that drives today’s world while, at the same time, sharpening their mastery of the unchanging, essential skills of teaching: communication, motivation and leadership. For schools, the book promotes the use of the marketing approach to school administration.


The book discusses topics critical for schools to attract and keep students.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 12, 2024
• ISBN: 9798369413791

Jay R Delfin

A large part of Jay R. Delfin’s professional experience was in the airline business where he gained a 360-degree understanding of that industry especially from the perspective of its personnel who perform the industry’s complex tasks under varying operating conditions and degrees of support. But it was his involvement in Performance Motivation Systems Asia, an incentive marketing and employee motivation group of companies, where he sharpened his focus on motivation as a powerful shaper of the human character and behavior. After a two-year assignment in The Philippines, Jay, launched the company in Indonesia, which he managed and grew for eight years. Later he became Group president. On retirement, Jay renewed his lifelong interest in education and he now offers a full line of education services under Touchpoint Education Development Services. Alongside his Education Development Service, Jay offers business advisory service in the area of Customer Experience Management (CXM) and Employee Engagement Management (ENM),.

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Classrooms in the Age of Rockets & Robots

Jay R Delfin

Copyright © 2024 by Jay R Delfin.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 01/11/2024

Xlibris

844-714-8691

www.Xlibris.com

547713

CONTENTS

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Introduction

Why I wrote this book

Experiences that made me what I am

Early School Memories

Good Teacher, Bad Teacher

A Lost Ideal

About This Book

Target Readership Locations

What of the developed world?

Corollary Program

Why the two-part structure

Education Infrastructure Model

A Change in Mind Set

Marketing is not a Dirty Word

Chapter 1 Professional At A Crossroads

Technology To The Rescue

Brave New World

Digital Progress: Boon or Bane?

Modern Diseases of the Digital Age

The Flipside

Chapter 2 The Privilege & Responsibilities of Teaching

The privilege of teaching

The privilege remains

The responsibilities of teaching

Skills requirements

A re-visit to my old elementary school

An Educator’s Dream

The tools of the teaching trade

Chapter 3 The Student-Centered Approach to Teaching

Not just knowledge; values and attitudes too

Can values be taught?

A historical perspective

Philippine Case Study

Chapter 4 The Many Facets of Teaching

1. The communicator

2. The model and guide

3. The leader

4. The manager

5. The consultant

Chapter 5 Communication

What is communication?

Types and Functions of communication

The perception process

Perception: the eye of the beholder

We create what we see

The dynamics of communication

Listening: The most important aspect of communication

Ten Commandments of good listening

Roadblocks to listening

Chapter 6 The Essential Role of Motivation In Teaching

The principle of self-importance

The carrot and stick principle

The principle of the ladder of needs

A behavioral approach to motivation

Understanding Behavioral Profiles

Chapter 7 The Behavioral Tendency Inventory (Bti)

The Behavioral Tendency Inventory

Dimensional Intensity Descriptors

Behavioral Tendencies

Dimensional Keys

Strategy Guidelines for the Behavioral Tendency Inventory

Compatibility Chart

Chapter 8 Questioning

Asking the right questions

Kinds of questions

The close-ended question

Open-ended question

Questioning technique: a key element in teaching success

Questioning technique exercise

Chapter 9 Education Marketing

Education is a business

The Marketing Concept

Marketing is Good

1. Product Quality

2. Communication services

3. Customer Service

4. Teacher Quality

Conclusion

DEDICATION

To my late wife, Lola Tjendraputra. I am deeply thankful for your patient understanding as you watched the snail’s pace at which I worked on this book. Your patience alone was a great support to me.

To my late parents, to my former teachers and to my children Myles Anthony, Lori Beatrice, Bryan Jay, Lynn Noelle. You have all contributed to the person that I am and the structure of this book. I thank all those who have read and commented on the manuscript of this book and made suggestions that helped to refine the thoughts and ideas that are in this book.

This book is offered as a support to current and future teachers and schools and all those involved in the education process. This is for all of you!

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The first persons I should thank are my late parents. They were my first teachers and the first to introduce me to the basics of proper behavior, guiding me throughout my growing up years. My mother, who was a very hard-working woman, taught me the sense of responsibility to perform the duties that were called for by my role in the family and, by inference, in the community as a whole. She taught us, not by words, but by her behavior at home. She spent her days endlessly and quietly doing house tasks. That showed us clearly the importance of accepting one’s responsibility and doing the tasks associated with the responsibility. Clearly, she was constantly aware that she had willingly accepted her role as a wife and a mother and she did the tasks of the role without prompting or question. My father was a school teacher; he inculcated in me a high regard for the importance and value of education in the formal academic sense as well as in the sense of continuous personal improvement and development. I believe it was from him that I got my natural attraction to books and to reading. I am always proud to tell others (and I say it again here) that, at Grade Three, I was reading Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Later I was amazed that, at such an early age, I found myself reading over and over again the speeches of Brutus and Mark Anthony and enjoying the experience. I was amazed because I do not think I understood all the words that I was reading; yet, in spite of that, I could deeply appreciate the beauty of the words that cascaded from the pages of the book, conjuring up grand images in my young mind. I think it was the rhythm in the cascade of words that captivated my imagination and made me totally fascinated. Up to today, I remember the book, in which I discovered Julius Caesar. It was a fairly thick hard-cover red book containing an anthology of the writings of great authors. There was Charles Dickens, O’Henry, Nathaniel Hawthorn, Edgar Allan Poe and others that I could no longer recall. The other writing in that book that I also enjoyed reading was The Tale of Two Cities. Again, the rhythm of the words, especially the opening lines, was what got me hooked. Those lines, and my fascination for them, have stayed with me over the years.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. A Tale of Two Cities. Charles Dickens Chapter I

Along with my parents, I also acknowledge my three brothers and my only sister. Being the youngest in a family of five, I could not really share experiences with my elder brothers due to the rather large gap in our ages. I was still very young when they all went to college (the seminary) so I really could not relate to whatever it was that they were involved in. Fortunately, there was only a two-year difference between my age and that of my only sister. We basically grew up together. We went to school together and shared the task of helping our mother with whatever house work our young age allowed us to do. By itself, doing those tasks and growing up with my sister were an education in themselves.

Thirdly, I must also thank the many teachers who taught me at all the stages of my schooling, from the earliest elementary grade, primary and secondary levels, all the way to university. They have played an important role in my life and, what I am now is largely the result of my school experience under their guidance. This is not to say that I was so fortunate as to have had the best teachers one could wish for. I would be lying if I said that because I have had teachers who were sorely lacking in many necessary teaching qualities and skills. But I include all my teachers in this acknowledgement because all of them enabled me to gain a better understanding of the realities of life and a fuller understanding of one important fact of life and growing up. It is the fact that the task of becoming a responsible adult who is able to bring value to his or her community is a personal one. The final determinants of what one eventually becomes and the moral values that one holds in life are one’s own personal choices. And that is a personal responsibility, not of another person – neither one’s parents and family members nor one’s teachers. True enough these people have some influence on one’s eventual personality. However, the one ultimately responsible for a person’s character is the person himself or herself. Why is that? It is because of that inherent gift of every human being: the freedom to choose and decide for oneself.

Fourthly, I also acknowledge the many people that have crossed my path as I journeyed through life -- classmates, work colleagues, bosses, subordinates and everyone else that I came in contact with as I moved through the many transitions in my life. They too have taught me valuable lessons and have eventually influenced the content of this book.

But, most importantly, I give special thanks to the people who helped me in various ways, in writing this book -- enhancing my initial skeletal ideas of the book, reviewing my first drafts or parts of them. I also acknowledge the valuable support of my many friends in the academe for advising me and giving me insights on the process of education, in general, and of teaching in particular.

I am deeply grateful to Myles Anthony Delfin for providing the title of this book and to Bryan Jay Delfin and Kathy Rosales for the cover design, the book layout and illustrations. Lastly, my most special thanks to Lola Tjendraputra who saw me painfully struggling to complete my writing and, at certain points, undoubtedly experiencing great frustration in observing the snail’s space that the project was going. By her mere patience, I am extremely thankful and appreciative.

To all teachers everywhere, especially those in developing countries like my own, The Philippines, this book is for all of you. I sincerely hope this little book will help you even in a small way. If the book did nothing else but inspire you and re-kindle your pride in your chosen profession, it would have achieved its mission and given me a great sense of fulfilment.

To the rest of us who actually have a big stake in the education systems of our respective countries, but are often too busy to