ALT-2 What Abilities must you have to become a Teacher
A teacher is much more than someone who just teaches. To be an effective teacher, you have to be everything to everyone, from a police officer to a guardian/parent. Everything, that is, except a friend. The following is a list, in no particular order, of the qualities of a teacher:
Communicator
You must be an effective communicator and be able to communicate with everyone on all different levels. You need to be able to make difficult concepts sound simple, fun and enjoyable. Imagine making the most boring concept interesting enough to capture the minds of energetic kindergarten children or the bored minds of teenagers and you are part way there.
Police officer
Breaking up fights, confrontations and arguments and making the classroom a safe environment to learn in is also a definite quality for a teacher. Yes, being a teacher is also about keeping the peace; sometimes it's more doing this than actually teaching.
But you also need to know when to ignore, or tactfully ignore, when to joke and when to get serious in different circumstances.
Social worker, parent and guardian
Some pupils come to school laden down with many different problems. Many pupils I teach come from broken homes where parents are divorced, there are step-parents, some of whom the children hate with a passion; and many other personal issues. There may be problems they don't want, or can't, talk to their parents about, or there are occasionally pupils who are victims of abuse.
Some pupils have approached me after suffering a recent bereavement and wanted some advice about who to turn to. Teachers are expected to fulfill this role as well.
Patient, kind and understanding
Which teachers do you remember from your school days: the nice ones or the nasty ones? We always think of those we like, who we could approach and who would listen and not judge; that adult who would treat us like another adult and avoid the patronizing comments but give us the responsibility we crave as a teenager.
Teachers need these qualities in an overflowing abundance. Quick to calm, slow to anger, a peacemaker and yet all round genuine person, a teacher must have everything.
Administration skills
These days, teaching is as much about planning and paperwork as it is about the teaching. A good teacher will be well-organized and have lessons, activities and resources arranged and to hand. This means working from an up to date scheme of work, have an effective lesson plan (and a contingency in case it goes wrong, as it usually will), as well as making sure all reports, monitoring and other paperwork are all in place and completed on time (if not before).
Add to this the information for parents' evening (consultation days, or whatever they're called), contacting parents, writing assessments, marking exams, the list is endless. And it means that teachers must have excellent organizational skills and be able to prioritize their work.
Teach
In between all this, teachers are expected to help their students learn. That means giving them the opportunities to study, develop and grow, while expanding their minds and creating young, independent adults from little children.
It's unfortunate that this part of the job often comes somewhere towards the bottom of the list, when it's the actually the job title. But it's the combination of all of these things, sometimes in different amounts for different classes, which makes a god teacher. The challenges teachers face aren't always the same and aren't always nice, but a teacher just gets on with the job because there's hardly any time left to do anything else.
