- Students: please don’t read
Tomorrow is World Teachers’ Day and… heck, who am I kidding! – it’s months away. Well, no matter, for any time’s a good time to talk about teaching, isn’t it? Teachers mostly learn the art and craft of teaching by trial and error, but at the cost of valuable time and energy. A teacher for many years now, the author is convinced that the steepness of the learning curve can be considerably reduced by pointing the younger generation of teachers in the right direction. It’s in this belief that the following lines were composed:
A difficult profession. You can do worse than starting your career with an appreciation that teaching is a difficult profession. While there are three great reasons to become a teacher, namely: July, August, and September; there are nine equally convincing reasons not to become one. And while it’s decidedly pleasant not to have a corporate-style boss with the sole aim in life of driving you off the edge of sanity, be prepared to be constantly judged by an army of students who will be scrutinising your every move. Not to mention all that talk of being a good role-model and stuff.
Be up-to-the minute. You must shirk nothing when it comes to being in a position to impart state-of-the-art knowledge. Never forget to amend the dates on last year’s PowerPoint slides (nothing looks as unprofessional as old dates on lecture notes – or God forbid! – the exam question-paper). Also, make it a point to always recommend the latest edition of the text-book. Here, the novice teacher may point out that in most cases one only teaches subject matter that had matured thirty years ago; or the fact that the latest edition of most text books is identical to the last one. Suffice it to say here that these are time tested guidelines, which the rookie should follow without questioning; for as he grows in experience he is sure to start seeing the wisdom behind them.
You are not the student. It may sound obvious, but this fact is often forgotten by the young teacher. If you are teaching history you need not know by heart the years and dates; if teaching chemistry, the chemical reactions. If some smart-aleck decides to test your memory, put him promptly in his place by reminding him who the student is, and whose job it is to know things by heart.
Authority. The latest scientific studies prove that students learn best from teachers they respect (something that should have been obvious without so much parade of science). The most important quality a teacher must possess, then, is authority. Now nothing compromises a teacher’s authority more than these three words: ‘I don’t know’, especially if you hold a PhD So, if a situation arises where you happen to not know something (these situations arise with surprising frequency), you must negotiate the situation without uttering these fateful words. One way is to remark what a good question that is, and then to assign all the students to find the answer to it (trust the other students to deal appropriately with the wise-guy in their own time). Similarly, a serious challenge to your authority can manifest in the form of a student pointing out a mistake you’ve made verbally or on the board. Tell the class that you did it on purpose to see whether any student was alert enough to notice it. Congratulate the student for his concentration; and reprimand others for sleeping in the class.
Experience says that if you are friendly and cooperative with your students, they tend to start taking the kind of liberties with you that make you want to kick yourself in the hindquarters
Teacher-student relations. Experience says that if you are friendly and cooperative with your students, they tend to start taking the kind of liberties with you that make you want to kick yourself in the hindquarters. If, on the other hand, you present your no-nonsense side and try to maintain your distance, the students are apt to be mentally too detached and uninvolved to learn much. It’s a tangled little nut, the jury on which is out since long. As soon as a verdict is in, it will be added to the next edition of this guide.
Grading. Up-and-coming teachers usually make the mistake of believing that they are paid to teach – nothing could be farther from the truth. The fact is that they get their salary for evaluating students: paper setting, marking, grading, etc. When it comes to grading, there was a time when absolute grading was the norm, and life was simple. Now, the ubiquitous relative grading has made matters somewhat tricky for the uninitiated. In relative grading it doesn’t matter how many marks any given student has secured; instead, what matters is how far ahead he is of the class average, or behind. A good teacher is one who teaches so well that most of his students are above average. An exceptional teacher is one who ensures that all his students are above average. Although there’s a slight mathematical difficulty here, it’s nothing that unwavering hard work cannot overcome. Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise.
A word on political correctness. Finally, today’s teacher can never be too careful when it comes to political correctness. Especially, he or she must do his or her best to purge his or her speech from the last vestiges of sexist language. Failure to do so will cause his or her students to get offended or worse, instead of focusing on what he or she is teaching.