Do Teachers advice thier learners to take teaching as a career path?
Can teaching become a career path of choice? As teachers, we often hesitate to talk about how hard teaching really is. We have to be honest about the challenges teachers face if we’re going to work toward addressing them.
It’s not supposed to be this difficult and behaving like nothing is wrong doesn’t help our cause.
Compared to other professions that also require training and education, the stress that teachers go through each day can be significantly greater. Sometimes, they even have to spend their own money on school supplies. Teaching is a difficult career path, but it can be very fulfilling, knowing that you have touched lives.
Professionals in many industries have a way of doing their jobs so well that they “make it look easy.” I think its also because they try so much to focus on the positives than the negatives also the love and passion thereof makes it all look easy for some people when it actually is not.
This career path may look easy but the opposite is true.
As kids, we soak up this illusion even more than we do as adults. All of us have been in classrooms, and looking back on those experiences it can seem as though teachers were mostly relaxed, that one activity seemed to easily fold into the next, etc.
Little did you know that’s all part of the magical web teachers so painstakingly weave to create an environment conducive to learning. Good teachers might make it look easy, but it isn’t at all, and the fact that a lot of people assume that it is, can be disappointing and disheartening.
From planning that lesson to implementation as a teacher you try by all means to simplify the lesson not only that the learners would understand but just so you can excell as well. Along the way in your planning you become the learner imagining if you’d enjoy the lesson and remember all thats taught the next day/week/year…
As teachers, we often hesitate to talk about how hard this career path really is, especially with people who are new to the job or who are considering going into the field. Because, as difficult as the job may be, it is also unimaginably rewarding sometimes, and good days can feel almost magical. Plus, the world needs more good teachers, and we don’t want to turn people off from such a goal.
Still, we have to be honest about the challenges teachers face if we’re going to work toward addressing them.
There is a perception that teachers only work from 8-3 each day. You cannot plan your lesson in front of your learners/students. You can not prepare for a lesson while your learners/students are in class. This is the time(8 -3)Teachers actually spend with their students.
Any teacher will tell you that this only represents a portion of what is required of them. Teachers often arrive early and stay late. They must grade and record papers, collaborate with other teachers, plan and prepare for the next day’s activities or lessons, attend faculty/phase or committee meetings, staff meetings, parents conferences, grade meetings, clean and organize their classrooms, and communicate with family members,etc.
Apart from teaching syllabus in a given period, teachers have many other important tasks at their hands. Organizing parent-teacher meetings, taking tests and exams, checking notes, organizing annual functions, sports events, arranging picnics, maintaining documents and an unimaginable amount of paperwork.
They don’t get sufficient time to prepare and plan before executing the tasks.
Unfortunately extra mural activities must never take time from teaching and learning. All that must happen but teaching and learning remains uninterrupted. All this is to holistically develop all learners.
Teaching is known as one of the challenging career path because it is not easy to make a child or person learn something and make him / her practice is throughout his/ her life.
Teachers are those people who introduces a new way to everyone’s lives. After parents, teachers have the most important role in a student life. They are the one who mold the character of their students and contribute to raising educated, sane and responsible citizens of society.
This makes teaching as a career path valuable and significant since they have the opportunity to impact the lives of students and the future of any society.
But at the same time, this makes teacher jobs challenging and full of responsibility. They come across many obstacles, hurdles, and challenges as given below regardless of their training and location. Imagine now discouraging your child to follow thier dreams…despite all these challenges teachers still hope to influence young people to choose teaching as a career path of choice.
Although its true, teachers don’t focus much on salaries its about touching lives. Teachers are rarely appreciated or paid incentives for their tedious job. Hence discouraged to even motivate anyone to take teaching as a career path, a lack of acknowledgment of their efforts by the schools as well as parents. On the contrary, parents tend to point out their mistakes and shortcomings openly.
Part time jobs for teachers are available where they can make decent money.
Teaching is a profession of choice and should not be viewed as a fall back plan where everything else has failed. Teachers and governments all over the world have acknowledged that teaching practices can have a significant effect on the education of the population leading to significant impact on economic and social outcomes of their citizens (Sadker & Zittleman, 2009).
The teachers therefore play a pivotal role in shaping the future of any given community. With such a noble responsibility, it is obvious that those who follow this career path do their duties with passion because they know what is at stake in the event they fail in their duties.
As such, it would be the correct assumption to declare that teachers love their work due to their belief system.
Yes, others have refuted this assumption claiming that over time, teaching becomes monotonous and boring. Therefore, teachers do not like teaching. In addition, it is a very stressful profession and the challenges far outweigh the benefits.
Regardless of all these issues, teachers are very important. Each and every profession has its challenges and benefits but can it be that we can’t even encourage others to follow suit?
In today’s society, parents do not have enough time to spend with their children. As such, teachers have become the parents and mentors to most students. To mitigate the side effects of teaching, teachers should ensure that they change their teaching practices regularly and always ensure that they challenge their students. In so doing, class sessions will always be enjoyable. This is the obvious reason why teaching will always need young people.
Lets just conclude that teachers have a responsibility to teach and influence learners and students positively. Whether they wish to follow teaching as a profession or not. All a teacher does is support. The teaching profession bears significant challenges for both new and existing teachers. This profession keeps constantly evolving. Hence, the source of challenges that offer both positive and negative grounds of growth also change. Knowing and understanding the problems faced by new teachers in their initial teaching experience is crucial to prepare new teachers.
I think what’s important should be talking openly about the challenges faced by teachers but not discourage anyone to enter the fraternity. Most significantly, knowledge of these challenges is helpful to improve and redesign pre-service and in-service programs. A problem is that any activity or undertaking hinders performance of assigned tasks by a beginning teacher.