What does a teacher do: advantages and disadvantages of the profession
A good teacher is not only knowledge of the subject and love for children. In the article we tell what skills a teacher should have and what functions he performs.
A modern teacher is partly a psychologist, methodologist, mentor and friend who teaches subject skills and conducts educational work. People come to him for knowledge, advice and support.
The teacher fulfills an important mission – he helps to form skills, transfers important knowledge and motivates students to develop. To cope with a responsible task, the teacher must have empathy, be patient and objective, treat the actions and words of students with understanding. Also have developed communication skills, be open and friendly in order to find a common language with the guys and better convey their thoughts. Leadership and the ability to influence, hold attention and use a creative approach in teaching are also important.
Being a teacher means constantly participating in the life of the class, this is one of the few professions that is equated with a vocation. The teacher performs the following duties:
- explains new material;
- Checks homework and tests;
- monitors learning;
- reveals the talents and inclinations of students, studies the individual characteristics of each student;
- conducts class meetings, advises students and their parents on educational issues;
- organizes after-school meetings and activities;
- designs curricula;
- fills in logs, reports, and other documents.
The teacher should not only teach, but also constantly improve their skills, master and implement new teaching methods, and improve the presentation of the material.
A teacher can work in private or public institutions: in preparatory classes, junior, middle and high schools, educational and methodological centers, conduct tutoring activities.
Profession benefits:
- Socially meaningful work.
- Interesting and creative challenges.
- Part-time work is possible.
- Social guarantees and benefits (56 days vacation, discounts on utilities and transport depending on the region, allowances and bonuses).
The disadvantages include possible stressful situations with difficult teenagers.
The site hh.ru posted 12,692 vacancies for the query “Teacher” throughout Russia (November 2021).
We asked Olga Kadushina, a teacher of Russian language and literature at MAOU gymnasium 70, Yekaterinburg, to tell us about her profession, the winner of the professional pedagogical competition of the presidential platform “Russia is a country of opportunities”.
“The life of a modern teacher is a big, intricate quest whose conditions and difficulty level change every day. The successful result of passing it depends only on each of us, on the baggage of knowledge, skills, with which the teacher comes to work at school, as well as on the willingness to acquire new experience, without which it is impossible to move forward. But the main thing is on what our student will come out with in “adult life”, because the success of the teacher is made up of the success of all the mentees.
It’s no secret that, in addition to the direct duties of a subject teacher and, possibly, a class teacher, a teacher is constantly in working tension: checking notebooks, reporting, events of various levels and formats, advanced training courses … At the same time, he must always be interesting to his students: he must navigate the information about the events taking place in the world, be aware of the latest news in his subject area, be able to find the answer to any question – and in any conditions: in the classroom, in the corridor, on the way to school. We are expected to be creative and serious about business, rigor and understanding at the same time. If you not only have an excellent command of the subject, you are pleased with the interaction with children in all its diversity, but at the same time you are ready to overcome difficulties (which in one way or another accompany any activity in general) on the way to pedagogical excellence, then you should try yourself as a teacher!
I wish everyone who decides to take this step to practice more: take a part-time job at school or become a tutor, go to a children’s camp as a counselor or methodologist, and also communicate more with caring colleagues – within the framework of professional competitions, attending lectures, master classes and open lessons. “Experience is the son of difficult mistakes,” as the great A. S. Pushkin said, but after all, all roads can be mastered by the walking one. Good luck on your way per aspera ad astra!”
