“TEACHERS”

History

Teaching has transformed from a simple educational function into a complex profession.
Teaching develops the minds of children and young adults, and prepares them to become
worthwhile citizens of society. The history of teaching can be traced to Confucious (561
B.C.), who was the first famous private teacher. Many ancient Greeks hired private teachers
to educate their children. In the Middle Ages, learning institutions such as Cambridge
University were founded and teacher training became required.

Teaching in Colonial Times

In early American Colonial days, housewives and ministers taught. The Pilgrims established
the first public school in 1635, and this was followed by "dame" schools, primarily for
women. Subsequently, Latin grammar schools that offered a secondary education for boys
were formed.

Massachusetts and Virginia passed laws requiring that for every 50 families, an
elementary school was to be built, and for every 100 families, a Latin grammar school.
Teachers taught reading, writing and religion in these schools, and much of the teaching was
done by requiring students to memorize subject matter.

Teaching in the 1800s

The 1800s brought dramatic changes in the teaching profession. By now, Massachusetts
required all towns with more than 500 families to have a high school for all students.

In the 1840s, Horace Mann and Henry Barnard helped create school systems in
Massachusetts and Connecticut that further increased teacher training and pay. In most states,
teachers by this time needed to take a test for certification that licensed them to teach.

In 1857, the National Teachers Association formed and was the largest labor union in
the United States. It fought for the rights of teachers and improved conditions in the
profession.

Teaching in the 1900s

In the 1900s, because conditions began to improve and teaching became a more desirable
profession, more men became teachers.

In 1954, a turning point took place when the U.S. Supreme Court, in the case of
Brown vs. Board of Education, ruled that "separate but equal schools" were inherently
unequal, and ordered the integration of public schools throughout the United States.

The teaching profession emphasized improving teaching methods to accommodate the

new educational needs of a changing society.

Teaching Today

Teaching today has advanced into the television and computer age, which has changed the
emphasis in teaching. Giving students assignments on TV or the Internet has opened new and
different educational possibilities

The influx of new immigrants requires increased classes in English as a Second

Language. President George W. Bush's "No Child Left Behind" program began the 21st
century by challenging and expecting teachers to emphasize basic skills in the classroom.
Standardized testing of students made teachers more accountable for results.

The Carl Perkins Career Education Act 2002 increased awareness of vocational and
adult education. Many teachers now focus on preparing students for careers through technical
education.

Who teachers are in class

Personality

Effective teacher personality is a blend between who we really are, and who we are as
teachers. In other words, teaching is much more than just ‘being ourselves’, however much
some students want to see the real person. We have to be able to present a professional face
to the students which they find both interesting and effective. When we walk into the
classroom, we want them to see someone who looks like a teacher whatever else they look
like. This does not mean conforming to some kind of teacher stereotype, but rather finding,
each in our own way, a persona that we adopt when we cross the threshold. We need to ask
ourselves what kind of personality we want our students to encounter, and the decisions we
take before and during lessons should help to demonstrate that personality. This is not to
suggest that we are in any way dishonest about who we are - teaching is not acting, after all -
but we do need to think carefully about how we appear

What makes a good teacher?’

Visual
1. The teacher must be able to maintain
the students’ focus or concentration
towards material for learning.
2. The teacher should apply a technique
that makes the whole class feel like they
are being paid attention to by their teacher
3. A teacher must be highly appreciating
the time.
4. The teacher is responsible for keeping
the students’ feelings of comfort in
learning.
5. Important to give reward to the
students’ achievement in learning.
Auditory
1. The teacher should be creative to
get the students’ attention.
2. A good English teacher must have
a good competence as well as a good
performance.
3. The teacher must have a good
ability and creativity in engaging the
students to be interested in learning
English.
4. The teacher must be firm.
7. The teacher who provides students
with challenges.

Adaptability

What often marks one teacher out from another is how they react to different events in the
classroom as the lesson proceeds. Every teacher has experienced lessons that go awry:
students respond in unexpected ways, the lesson goes faster than expected, or possibly the
planned worksheet is suddenly nowhere to be found. Even an elaborately organized lesson
may require adjustment in response to student questions or their demand for more time. In
such circumstances, the ability to adapt to the situation to achieve lesson objectives through
an alternate plan worked out on the fly can transform a potentially doomed lesson into
success. Adaptability, being able to recognize a change in circumstances that requires
adjustments to plans and prior decisions and then making the necessary adaptations to meet
the needs of the new situation, is a necessary skill for teachers. Adaptability is especially
important for delivering effective instruction. Good teachers are able to absorb the
unexpected and to use it to their and the students’ advantage. Adaptability requires flexibility
and sensitivity. An important part of developing adaptability comes from the willingness to
make mistakes and to learn from them. Not everything will work, but students generally will
be forgiving when they know you are trying to be responsive to them. Keep your focus on the
students. Know their feelings and thoughts and your intuition will lead you to workable
solutions. When you can jump away from a plan that is failing, you are more likely to support
learning.

Teacher Roles

TEACHER AS A LEARNER

Teaching and Learning is a continuous process and wherein strategies may differ with
the moving generations. The teacher’s job is to convince the student that education fulfills the
need and learning in the classroom. A Teacher has to think from the learners’ perspective
before she plans to interact with the students. When a teacher plans with the learners’
perspective and starts teaching, students can receive the information without any hesitation in
grasping the things.

TEACHER AS AN ASSESSOR

As a teacher, assessing is one of the important tools for extracting students’

knowledge by giving continuous feedback. A teacher’s role is not complete just by teaching a
lesson. Assessing is an effective tool for making students' learning perfect. These assessments
can be carried out through verbal feedback, by conducting quizzes, by giving some tasks etc.
An assessment makes a teacher plan for her future teaching techniques and helps them to
master their language. 

TEACHER AS A FACILITATOR

It is very significant that students should sense that their teachers are concerned about
them, and thus, the teacher should become the best facilitator for the students in all aspects.
As a facilitator, she has to direct and support students in learning for themselves as self-
explorers. Teachers should develop the best learning environment which reflects the students’
lives in societal, intellectual, and linguistic occurrences.

TEACHER AS AN EVALUATOR
 As everyone is aware, evaluation plays a prominent role in a teacher’s success.
Evaluation is a subjective process, which is related to academics. A teacher has to be an
effective evaluator when evaluating a student. True and fair evaluation should be done by a
teacher in order to do justice to a student’s career. A student has a wide scope of learning
through the mistakes committed. As an evaluator, a student should also be focused on the
areas of competence rather than on their weaknesses, and every student should adhere to
positive expectations. 

Rapport

A significant feature in the intrinsic motivation of students will depend on their perception of
what the teacher thinks of them, and how they are treated. It is no surprise, therefore, to find
that what many people look for when they observe other people’s lessons, is evidence of
good rapport between the teacher and the class.

Rapport means, in essence, the relationship that the students have with the teacher,
and vice versa. In the best lessons, the teacher will always see a positive, enjoyable, and
respectful relationship. Rapport is established in part when students become aware of teacher
professionalism, but it also occurs as a result of the way teachers listen to and treat students in
classrooms.

Recognizing students

Based on the research, they said that a good teacher was "someone who knows their
students." This comment is revealing both literally and metaphorically. In the first place,
students want teachers to know their names rather than, say, just pointing at them. But this is
extremely difficult for teachers who see eight or nine groups a week. How can they remember
all their students? Teachers have developed a number of strategies to help them remember
students’ names. One method is to ask the students (at least in the first week or two) to put
name cards on the desk in front of them or stick name badges on to their sweaters or jackets.

The teacher can also draw up a seating plan and ask students always to sit in the same
place until we have learnt their names. Many teachers use the register to make notes about
individual students (Do they wear glasses? Others keep separate notes about the individuals
in their classes (are they tall? etc.) and others keep separate notes about the individuals in
their classes. There is no easy way of remembering students’ names, yet it is extremely
important that we do so if good rapport is to be established with individuals
Listening to students

Students respond very well to teachers who listen to them. It’s important that the students can
talk to the teacher when they have problems or they don’t get along with the subject. The
teachers need to make themselves as available as they can to listen to individual students.
Teachers also need to listen properly to students in lessons too. And they need to show that
they are interested in what the students have to say. 

Respecting students

‘They should be able to correct people without offending them’ Correcting students is always
a delicate event. If the teachers are too critical, they risk demotivating their students, yet if we
are constantly praising them, we risk turning them into ‘praise junkies. In speaking activities,
some students want to be corrected the moment they make any mistake, whereas others
would like to be corrected later. But whichever method of correction the teachers choose, and
whoever they are working with, students need to know that teachers are treating them with
respect, and not using mockery or sarcasm, or expressing despair at their efforts. 

Being even-handed

Most teachers have some students that they like more than others. For example, we all tend to
react well to those who take part, are cheerful and cooperative, take responsibility for their
own learning, and do what we ask of them without complaint. Yet, as one of the students in
the research said, "a good teacher should try to draw out the quiet ones and control the more
talkative ones". Students will generally respect teachers who show impartiality and who do
their best to reach all the students in a group rather than just concentrating on the ones who
‘always put their hands up’.

The reasons that some students are not forthcoming can be many and varied, ranging
from shyness to cultural or religious beliefs. family background. Sometimes students are
reluctant to take part overtly because of other stronger characters in the group. And these
quiet students will only be They are negatively affected when they see far more attention
being paid to their more tenacious classmates. At the same time, giving some students more
attention than Others may make those students more difficult to deal with later since they will
come to expect special treatment. Treating all students equally not only helps to establish and
maintain rapport, but is also a mark of professionalism.
 Teacher Tasks

Preparation

Effective teachers are well-prepared. Part of this preparation resides in the knowledge they
have of their subject and the skill of teaching. But another feature of being well-prepared is
having thought in advance of what teachers are going to do in their lessons. Teachers need to
have some idea of what the students are going to achieve in the lesson.

Of course, what happens in a lesson does not always conform to plans, but students
always take comfort from the perception that their teacher has thought about what will be
appropriate for them. 

Keeping records

Many teachers find the administrative features of their job (taking the register, filling forms,
writing report cards) irksome, yet such record keeping is a necessary adjunct to the classroom
experience. There is one particularly good reason for keeping a record of what we have
taught. It works as a way of looking back at what we have done in order to decide what to do
next.

It is important for professional teachers to try to evaluate how successful an activity

has been in terms of student engagement and learning outcomes. It is one of the
characteristics of good teachers that they are constantly changing and developing their
teaching practice as a result of reflecting on their teaching experiences

Being reliable

A reliable teacher is dedicated to his job, practices it diligently and makes the student believe
in it too. The student should be present at the initial interactions so that the teacher can
receive feedback from the student. After all, the learning happens on a mutually.

Teacher Skills

Managing classes

Effective teachers see classroom management as a separate aspect of their skills.

Teachers will know how to put students into groups, or when to start and finish an activity.
Teachers will have worked out what kinds of instructions to give, and what order to do things
in. We will have decided whether students should work in groups, in pairs, or as a whole
class.

Teachers will have to consider whether they want to move the students around the
class, or move the chairs into a different seating pattern. Successful class management also
involves being able to prevent disruptive behavior and reacting to it effectively when it
occurs.

Destinations

When teachers take learning activities into the classroom, they need to persuade their students
of their usefulness. Good activities should have some kind of destination or learning
outcome, and it is the job of the teacher to make this destination apparent. That is why a
summing-up, or feedback session at the end of a discussion, for example, is so valuable

Matching tasks and groups

Spratt, Pulverness, and Williams (2005: 148) state the key concept of grouping students and
the language teaching classroom. Teachers need to consider a number of different factors
bellows:

a). The teaching aim It is much easier to choose how to group students when we have decided
on the aims of the lesson and the aim of each activity.

b). The learning styles of the students For example, some students prefer to work as
individual, others in groups.

c). The ability and level of the students Most classes are ‘mixed ability’ i.e. the include
students of different abilities. Teachers can group’s students for some activities so that
students of the same ability work together, and for some activities so that students of different
abilities work together.

d). The personalities of our students. Most of the time students will work together, but the
sometime there are students who do not work together positively.

e). The class size. With a class of between 20 and 30 students, teachers can manage pair and
group work quite easily. With classes of more than 30 students, pairs and group work are
possible, but need more careful planning.
 Teacher Knowledge

Materials and resources

When students ask the kind of complicated questions, good teachers know where to find the
answers. In other words, teachers need to know about books and websites where such
technical information is available. The number of textbook titles released annually can be a
source of material to help teachers. And there are enough grammar books and monolingual
learners' dictionaries (MLD) to choose from, to say nothing of the multitude of useful
websites on the Internet. Teachers know where to find at least one good reference grammar at
the appropriate level or a good MLD or can direct them to a library or a website, which they
can use as a source.

Classroom equipment

Over the last few decades the growth in different types of classroom equipment has been
incredible. In the past, teachers only used pens, boards, and chalk for teaching. But then along
came the tape recorder, the language laboratory, video machines, the overhead projector,
computers, data projectors, and interactive whiteboards. Learning how to use various types of
equipment is an important component of modern teacher education. Teachers must do
everything possible to keep up with technological changes in educational resources.
However, technology should not be used to make decisions about teaching and learning.
Teachers should instead decide what their students want to achieve and then see what
techniques and technology will assist them in accomplishing that goal.

Keeping up-to-date

Teachers need to know how to use a variety of activities in the classroom, of course, but they
also need to be constantly finding out about new ways of doing things. Teachers cannot
accomplish their function if they are satisfied with the knowledge acquired at the time they
graduated. On the contrary, they must constantly renovate and improve their knowledge.
Nowadays, knowledge is everywhere, easy to get, and teachers must frequently evaluate the
new information. Teachers must also be aware that the purpose of teacher-student
interactions is not only to set the basis for the exchange of information but also to provide a
suitable start for students that must become professionals with problem-solving capability.
Teachers must show their students how to perform critical thinking and to analyze great
amounts of information before they adopt or reject some of that information. Teachers cannot
continue to teach the same content in the same way, in every class, from year to year. The
educational context keeps changing. In other words, teachers must keep their subject
knowledge, and communication skills up-to-date on an ongoing basis.

Conclusion

One of the reasons that it is difficult to give general descriptions of good teachers is that
different teachers are often successful in different ways. Some teachers are more extrovert or
introvert than others, for example, and different teachers have different strengths and
weaknesses. A lot will depend, too, on how students view individual teachers and here again,
not all students will share the same opinions. It is often said that ‘good teachers are born, not
made’ and it does seem that some people have a natural affinity for the job.

But there are also others, perhaps, who do not have what appears to be a natural gift
but who are still effective and popular teachers. Such teachers learn their craft through a
mixture of personality, intelligence, knowledge and experience (and how they reflect on it).
And even some of the teachers who are apparently ‘born teachers’ weren’t like that at the
beginning at all, but grew into the role as they learnt their craft. Teaching is not an easy job,
but it is a necessary one, and can be very rewarding when we see our students’ progress and
know that we have helped to make it happen.