Teachers, how important!!!

dear dada, There are teachers who are devoted when it comes to their career, teaching, inspiring and motivating their students to study and learn well. There are teachers like what you wrote here that, only teaches for the sake of teaching -as profession- but not teaching by heart. In the same manner, there are students who seriously wants to learn and there are students who attend class for the sake of attendance. 46 years of teaching...that's really amazing dear pa

Teacher is a noble profession indeed! our family produces good teachers, it was only break from me because i never ambition to be a teacher patience is not instill with me, even when I was asked during my elementary grade if what will I be when I grow up.....I answer them with my chin up high.... I want to be Stewardess someday! Blessing

I think that having a great teacher is important to anyone. I think that if a student has a bad teacher, then they obviously have no passion to learn. If they have a good teacher, then they might want to learn.

hi professor teachers are most important .after reading your discussion I remember in junior college one great philosophy teacher who talked about the difference between good teachers and poor teachers. One teaches new ideas and new thoughts for 20 years and is really a good teacher. the poor teacher teaches his first year twenty times without ever adding any new ideas or thoughts or new learnings.This stuck with me all through the two years in the University to get my BA in English. I had one English Teacher that made his class so boring it was hard to keep awake.I heard one student say that he had not changed what he taught in the three years the profl was there. Even his lectures were word to word repeats. but I had another English teacher who made me want to learn even more about his particular field of Shakespeare and his writings. He was passionate on his subject and I got straight A's in his class.I had several teachers in grade school that made me passionate about nature and science too. Teachers and professors who do not keep up with new findings will lose their students interest really fast .All students are not lazy only a few and the ones who want to learn soon find out who are the best, the greatest teachers and Professors. ]

Hi professor! Good to see you again! Students are getting so mature that teachers have to study in refreshers and learning new things to stay ahead of the students. If the teachers don't educate themselves they will become obsolete and the students will know more than the teacher. One of my teacher friends had to go to school to learn how to use the new smart boards, which is a computerized type of chalk board type thing. She teaches 3rd grade.

Really i salute you for having a heart with your profession. Teachers are very important not only in their subject matter but also being a guidance for all the student. Teachers are the one who help us and our motivation in our school. If teachers don't study and rely only with their notes and talking to the blackboard then it doesn't help. Just like any other profession, Teacher need also to innovate and add more to what are the usual they have decade after decade of teaching. p.s.I am happy to see the date in your blog.

Education is very important and prospers with a good teacher but many teachers can turn a child off learning and have a negative effect all the best urban

i agree there are good and bad teachers. well, maybe the bad ones don't intentionally want to be bad in some cases i guess. like my case hehe rather than a teacher, i'm more of a tutor and the max number of students i've taught so far in a group is 13 although they are in the same place as a group but i go through their mistakes one by one. not all students pick up things at the same speed thus i prefer going through their work one on one although there will be others sitting down or doing their work or just chatting. i teach them in my own home and the situation here is such that, most parents send their children to tuition so that they don't waste their time at home and at least, they'll be doing something worthwhile for 2 hours like studying. that's most of the basic mentality although of course not all are like that. the students and some parents are not that receptive to new ways of teaching methods, they are fine with just memorising, revising on assessment books and learning their mistakes. and that's what i do as well. like you said, more of examination point of view as that's what most parents expect-their kids' grades to improve. of course, i do talk about things like their interests, how it's like in the 'adult world', work like of course hehe and most of them tend to listen attentively when i talk about what little i do know and they ask lots of question which makes me feel encouraged. i hope that their way of thinking will slowly change(they're quite conservative in some ways) and that would be good. of course, i get a sense of satisfaction as well when the students improve and their parents are happy about it. it makes me feel proud, that at least, the students were able to understand what i teach and hopefully they don't forget. i would like some tips as to how i can manage teaching creatively within this group of children, very talkative children i might add. hehe good day

Right now, one dilemma for teachers is standardized testing. It has NOTHING to with teaching kids, it's about funding for schools. According to Wikepedia.com, "A standardized test is a test that is administered and scored in a consistent, or "standard", manner. Standardized tests are designed in such a way that the questions, conditions for administering, scoring procedures, and interpretations are consistent[1] and are administered and scored in a predetermined, standard manner.[2] Any test in which the same test is given in the same manner to all test takers is a standardized test. Standardized tests need not be high-stakes tests, time-limited tests, or multiple-choice tests. The opposite of a standardized test is a non-standardized test. Non-standardized testing gives significantly different tests to different test takers, or gives the same test under significantly different conditions (e.g., one group is permitted far less time to complete the test than the next group), or evaluates them differently (e.g., the same answer is counted right for one student, but wrong for another student). Standardized tests are perceived as being more fair than non-standardized tests. The consistency also permits more reliable comparison of outcomes across all test takers." Here is the link to the entire page, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardized_test Lisa Shiff says, "School Beat: Why I Hate Standardized Testing" April is standardized testing month in the San Francisco Unified School District. For the second week in a row, kids of all ages are sitting down to sheets of multiple-choice questions, armed with newly sharpened pencils for battling sets of fill-in-the-bubble options. This is hardly the image we all have of students guided by creative teachers as they tackle challenging, engaging studies. The promise of standardized testing is that the results will tell us--for individual students, groups of students disaggregated by socio-economic factors, schools and districts--how well our kids have mastered the curriculum standards established for their respective grade levels. Lawmakers have been so lured by that promise that for the most part, standardized tests are now the only measure of achievement levels that are officially recognized. But that approach leaves a lot to be desired. For one thing, such tests are only one way to evaluate student success. It’s been long-recognized that multiple points of evaluation are required to assess social phenomena with assurance, and educational outcomes are no exception. An example of the brittleness of our current assessment strategy came recently from the parent of a child at my daughters’ school. Practice tests were sent out over the ten weeks preceding the real test. In one of the first of these, the student was given the dimensions of a pen used to contain some ducks and was asked to find the perimeter. The child, an animal lover with sufficient mastery of the required math to find the answer, was completely distracted by the fact that the height of the pen was too short to keep the ducks in no matter how big or small the perimeter was. This child had zeroed in on the most important, though unintended, piece of the scenario, showing a fantastic critical approach to a problem that could never be captured by our state assessment tools. Standardized tests can only effectively measure those things which can be well-structured in multiple-choice question format. The rich curriculum guidelines of our state push students far beyond this. We need and deserve to know more completely how successfully our schools are able to teach that material. A variety of assessments are necessary to accomplish this, but there is little movement by high level administrators and lawmakers to recognize this necessity and officially sanction the use of such tools. Other people, however, are pushing for the inclusion of such evaluation methods. The Coalition for Essential Schools (CES) has declared May to be “Exhibition Month” and is showcasing example exhibitions to highlight one of the alternative, rigorous approaches to evaluating student work. (http://www.ceschangelab.org/cs/clpub/view/cl_cat/29). An interesting video of a group exhibition is available for viewing, demonstrating the amount of planning, research, analysis, writing and presentation effort that had to be undertaken by the students, along with the work of negotiating group project dynamics. One of the most salient comments made in a post-exhibition teacher interview was that this assessment approach helped students appreciate that “it’s worth doing something hard and something big.” Appreciating the rewards of challenging intellectual labor should be one of the great lessons of education. Any assessment that is geared towards developing that appreciation has a lot more going for it than one that prioritizes recall and test-taking skills. Descriptions and examples of other evaluation methods, often referred to as “authentic assessments,” can be found on the CES site http://www.ceschangelab.org/cs/clpub/view/cl_cat/29. The use of “authentic assessments” does not necessarily eliminate the use of standardized tests. Each of these methods is appropriate for assessing different types of skills and all of them can be combined to provide a richer view of the entire student, school and or district and each can point to different strengths and weaknesses. However, any assessment has to be well-crafted in order for meaningful results to be derived. This question of quality, or rather the lack of it, is yet another reason why so many are challenging the use of the current set of standardized tests. At present, educational materials are a lucrative business dominated by big corporations. Classroom materials and their associated tests are now mass manufactured commodities. Checking for quality is a cost that seems to have been set aside in the pursuit of higher profits. Kids are taking practice and real tests that have ambiguous questions and just plain wrong answers. What, for instance, is the right answer to this question from one of this year’s third grade practice tests: “Distinguishing Between Fact and Opinion 9. Which of these is a fact? A. .Uncle Harold is fun to be with. B. Ted is silly to be afraid of horses. C. Darlene should learn how to swim. D. Mary will enjoy doing the things that Uncle Harold has planned.” Of course, there is no right answer, but the test makers inexplicably think that “D” expresses a fact. This kind of error is harmful and unacceptable. If we aim to hold our students to high standards, the tools we use to measure their achievement should be under equal scrutiny.

Hi Professor,I totally agree with your views regarding the attitude of present day teachers.There is no dedication nor is there a desire to broaden their vision and make their job interesting for the students as well as for themselves.They think of it as a means to an end - just earning their living! In our country teachers , as you rightly point out are given every kind of job including going from house collecting data for census etc etc...So, not much can be expected from them..Only when the government realises the importance of teachers and their role in shaping the future generations, can we hope to see some improvement in their status.This will also directly improve the quality of teachers - all the best and have a great weekend

Well i dont think there are good and bad teachers . I mean as long as you are teacher and you teach what you have to , its ok . The problem dont really lie in teachers , i think its more important the childeren and people to have the need of seeking Knowledge . Because just to say if you are the best teacher and do teach the same way people that want and people that dont want to be teached , you will see the difference :) Teacher is more like for guidence and showing you how much you have learned . If you want to learn something you got to seek it :)

Yes. I agree with you. In the initial few years say upto 10 years people learn to communicate better and do well. After that teachers do repetitive job and the quality of teaching may also come down. It also depends on the group of students --if they are more responsive the teacher may also teach well. If the students do not listen properly that will be a reason for not teaching well. good day.

you are right, teahcers have a big influenced to kid, they give a big impact to kid development.Just like you said, teacher also need a training i think, for improve theri knowldege and skill in teaching, in my country, there are so many new graduated teacher with unknown quality, and i think, it is a necessary to filter them, just taking the best. it is too risky to let someone that has no quality to take care our kids., my government have try to do some sertification to many techers, a teacher that have the serticificate will be approved as a good teacher. and i think that is fair, because the sertification is realy different and really show the quality if each teacher. so it is a good thing..

Teachers are really important as they can shape the character of our children. In my country I think they don't have so much paperwork, they are more focused to teaching. I have been a student for many years in all levels of education and I have seen very good and very bad teachers. Unfortunately, the worst teachers were in high school where we needed them the most. I agree that young children are not easy to deal with but teachers should provide education in all ways and be an example for the students. Organised teachers can really offer great potentials for the future of their students. My best teacher was in primary school and then in the university I had great professors. It looks like you are doing a great job as well.

Teaching is one of the most noble professions. It is true that teachers are the most important factor of a child's education. Though I believe that parents are the first teachers of the children; from home to school, as formal learning. As in any profession, a teacher should learn new ways and more about his/her profession. For here in the Philippines, old teachers still use the old ways of teaching, which is not applicable to the new generation. It is advisable for these teachers to attend seminars, symposiums, conventions, and others for a better profession. They're the foundation of every citizen who goes to school of a nation. It is important that they be the role models and inspiration of these youngsters.

I totally agree with you. I know that teachers play an important role in our country's economy and development. Sad to note that the teachers in our country are often underpaid and usually works extra hours without overtime. This is the reason why many of our great teachers are going out of the country to seek a better future for themselves and their family. I hope that later on our teachers will be given more for I know that we owe a lot to them.

I think that teachers are very important in the lives of children, because they are the ones who teach them the lessons that they need to learn during their childhood. When children are of school age, their teacher will be the person who spends the most of their waking hours with them, as they are there for the majority of the day, five days a week. An inspirational teacher can make an amazing difference in a child's life, however a poor teacher can ruin a child's education because they have the ability to completely end their confidence.

Respected Sir, Well, I have a different opinion here. I always keep reading about the seats that lie vacant at the Government colleges, schools. That does make a lot of impact too. Today, not many are interested to be a teacher and probably this is the last profession the newer breed wants to take up - and those who dont find any other job land up as Teachers... Though the salaries are high, but they are for those who are permanent and many are on contractual (for a year or two) basis. They know that they will not be selected the next time and so they take liberty and do not deliver their best. The results of both above are obvious. I worked as a Teacher for 12 years and even today I take tutions at home (though not many landlords allow it and in such cases I have to say no) but teaching is something I am passionate about. To me it is the noblest of all professions as here one enables others to live a better life... and the best satisfaction comes when you see someone after many years and he says "Sir, I am thankful to you and your teaching" - I have felt this makes a teacher complete. Regards theSids.

Hello Sir, These days teachers play their role in a different way. They need to follow the guidelines issued (say in case of CBSE, ICSE, State Boards) by the respective boards. But if they teach with a passion then there is no need for extra coaching or tuition required for the kids. These days if the student asks some doubts we get answers like check the net or some other time, or we'll discuss later etc. Now the relation between a teacher and student is more friendlier and very light in nature as earlier we used to have a special place in our heart for our teachers with respect. Hats off to you Sir, for being so passionate about your profession, for being dedicated towards shaping the future of our country. Best regards..

I agree with you professor. Teacher molds ones character and also socialization. Teacher has a great role for that but it is so hard to become a teacher in terms of molding.Giving right lesson as far as book is concerned is not that much hard because it is already written in the book and just have to simplify and disseminate the lesson and give concrete examples. As what I have said, what makes it difficult to become a teacher is to mold the character of a child. Nowadays, especially in a rural areas, we cannot expect that children will really obey teachers nor the parents. They wanted to do what they think good for them and give them satisfaction like internet cafe (they just play)and other places that will waste their time. And in urban areas, attendance is a problem also because a child that belongs to a poor family needs to work to help out needs of family. It is really hard to become a true teacher like you.