Teaching as a Profession

· Teachers’ work

· Qualities the teacher should possess

· Teachers’ problems in Russia and other countries

· Changes in Labour Market

1. Read the text and agree or disagree with the statements:

1. Teachers usually conceal their attitude to their job.

2. The main teacher’s role is to mother students and to be a parent surrogate.

3. When teachers entertain students but not teach them, they meet their own needs.

4. Instruction involves assisting students, diagnosing their problems and giving remedial teaching.

5. Criticism is as indispensable as praise in the class because teachers are always to be in an informal assessment mode.

TEACHER’S WORK

Teaching brings many rewards and satisfactions, but it is a demanding, exhausting, and sometimes frustrating job. It is hard to do well unless you enjoy doing it. Teachers who do enjoy their work will show this in their classroom behaviour. They will come to class prepared for the day’s lessons and will present lessons in a way that suggests interest and excitement in promoting learning. When students do achieve success, the teacher shares in their joy.

The teacher’s job involves many roles besides that of instructing students. At times, a teacher serves as a parent surrogate, entertainer, psychotherapist, and a record keeper, among other things. All of these are necessary aspects of the teacher’s role. However, they are subordinate to, and in support of, the major role of teaching.

Some teachers become more concerned with mothering or entertaining students than with teaching them. In these classes, much of the day is spent in reading stories, playing games, singing and listening to records. Such teachers do not like to spend much time teaching the curriculum and feel they must apologize to children or bribe them when lessons are conducted. These teachers are meeting their own needs, not those of the students. By the end of the year, the pupils will have acquired negative attitude toward the school curriculum, and they will have failed to achieve near their potential.

The teacher is in the classroom to instruct. This involves more than just giving demonstrations or presenting learning experiences. Instruction also means giving additional help to those who are having difficulty, diagnosing the sources of their problems, and providing remedial assistance. For the teacher we see that it means finding satisfaction in the progress of slower students as well as bright ones. If a teacher’s method of handling students who finish quickly is to assign them more of the same kind of exercises, students will will learn to work more slowly or hid the fact that they have finished. Teachers would do much better to assign alternate activities of the students’ choice or to allow them to move on to more challenging problems of a similar type.

Another important indicator is the way teachers respond to right and wrong answers. When teachers have the appropriate attitude, they accept either type of response for the information it gives about the student. They become nether overly elated about correct answers nor overly disappointed about incorrect answers. They use questions as a way to stimulate thought and to acquire information about a students progress.

Although praise and encouragement are important, they should not interfere with basic teaching goals. If a teacher responds with overly dramatic praise every time a student answers a simple question, the class will likely be distracted from the content of the lesson. A better strategy is to follow a simple correct answer with simple feedback to acknowledge that it is correct. Criticism, of course, should be omitted. In general, the teachers behavior during question-and answer sessions should say, “We’re going to discuss and deepen our understanding of the material,” and not, “We’re going to find out who knows the material and who doesn’t.”

1. Answer the following questions using the words given below:

1. What do you think is the primary task of the teacher?

2. What are the main pitfalls that may await a novice teacher?

3. What did you do if there were any attempts to rag you during your teaching practice?

4. What do you think is the best way to achieve the ideal situation at the lesson – genuine enthusiasm and attention on the part of the students?

5. Do you think teaching is an art, or merely a skilled occupation depending on experience?

3. Fill in the gaps and comment on the points of view.

1. My ______ ________ is to become an interpreter, but I am not against teaching either. Though I am still a student I give private classes and think that teaching is very _______: it’s a great pleasure to see the results of your work. In this profession the _______ thing is to ________ every student, to realize what way of teaching will be the best for him. Another thing, which is also _________, is mutual trust. If the students don’t trust their teacher, if he is not an _______ person for them, the teacher won’t be able to _________his students to achieve their _____ ____________. (rewarding, exemplary, reach, foremost, burning desire, encourage, essential, lofty goals).

2. I’m sure I’m not cut out for teaching. Every teacher should have such qualities as ________, _________, _______ and _______, but I lack them. I can’t stand small kids running and screaming around. I’m disturbed by their behaviour and feel no _______ or _________ for them. This profession requires a lot of _______, but I’m sure that all my efforts will be ________ and I won’t teach them anything.

4. Use the words given on the right to form the words that fit in the space in the same line. Do you share this interpretation of the primary task of a teacher?

For centuries it has been ________ belief

that the primary task of a teacher is

to _______ knowledge, to ‘put it across’ reproduction

to students. Today due to ___________ science

and _________ advancement and the technology

constant flow of __________, this alone inform

is not sufficient. The student must be

taught how to be able to _____________ analysis

the influx of new data, how to________ choice

what is relevant and what is not.

Thought-provoking questions are _______ essence

at every lesson. They develop students’

intellect and raise their ____________. esteem

5. Arrange the listed teacher qualities in the order you think most proper. Try to explain why you have done so.

A good teacher:

keeps in contact with the parents of his or her pupils and lets them participate in the life of the school;

is able to maintain discipline and order;

lets the students share his or her own life with all its ups and downs;

works hard to remain up-to-date in his or her subject;

openly admits when he or she has made a mistake or does not know something;

is interested in his or her students, ask them about their homes and tries to help where possible;

makes the students work hard and sets high standards;

is friendly and helpful to his or her colleagues;

uses a lot of different materials, equipment and teaching methods and attempts to make his or her lessons interesting;

helps the students to become independent and organize their own learning.

6. Read observation notes of the classes at School# 15 written by American educators. Exchange your opinions about the teachers’ qualities that were manifested at the lessons.

Observation notes from classes at School #15
Candy Beal
Published: Wed Feb 28 20:48:42 2001

Today we have had the chance to observe outstanding teachers at School #15. Natalia Gorbacheva, a 24-year master teacher, presented an outstanding math lesson to her heterogeneous group of ten year olds. She had her lesson on the board and wove yesterday’steachings into today’s follow-up, all the while relating math practices to real-world examples. Her flashing dark eyes and rapid-fire questions generatedgreat excitement in the classroom. Children couldn’t get their hands up quickly enough. They all wanted to show they knew and understood how to do the work. The pace of Russian classrooms leaves you breathless.

Another master teacher at School #15 is Natalie Tikhonravova. She teaches history to twelve-year-olds and doesn’t waste a second of her forty minutes. On the board she had posted the agenda/goals of the class and a vocabulary matching exercise. The center of the board was reserved for tracing the many parties involved in the Reformation Movement. Students were well prepared for the many literal and reflective questions she asked. They took copious notes and several participated in impromptu quizzes, slipped to them on cards. They wrote the answers and graded each other’s work. This teacher tries to gather six to eight grades per day in each class. She rotates student selection daily, so by the end of the week each pupil has two on-goingevaluations. (Russian teachers are constantly in the informal and formal assessment mode.) Her lessons ended with a summing up that required each person to demonstrate what they learned by selecting verbs, phrases and reflective thoughts that characterize the essence of the lesson. Here again, the pace was rapid, the students attentive and the teacher both a master of the subject matter and a gifted teacher of children.

7. Rephrase the sentence. The phrases in italics in the text will help you.

1. It was challenging for her to make the students listen and be attentive at the lesson as they were always teasing her and giggling.

2. She didn’t ask the same students all the time.

3. He is renowned for being a competent teacher, able to impart knowledge to children.

4. Foreign teachers notice that Russian teachers always try not only to give grades to their students but also comment on their answers saying words of praise, for example.

5. She tends to illustrate theory with examples from real life.

6. The tempo of the lesson was so high that the observers could hardly keep up with it.

7. It’s tough to find an approach to every student.

8. Listening (“Escalante”).

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