School culture and administration, according to one teacher, helps and give moral support to the teachers to teach their best. The other teacher doesn’t find any importance of dealing with the administration. Commonly both the teachers have said that there is no importance of dealing with the community. This is one of the aspects that show the teachers are lacking some of the important roles with the community. It could be the relationship between the parents or within the school staffs.
At various times I have heard the role of a teacher likened to one of the following: planner, executive, manager, care-giver, psychologist, counsellor, instructor, advisor, communicator, motivator, and administrator. But the basic role of a teacher is to teach, and this involves the facilitation of learning and learning skills. In our society teachers do teach in their own specialized field, with their way of teaching. But being a teacher there are some important roles and responsibilities he/she should look and concentrate on it, which apart of traditional way of teaching. The teachers in our schools are not that much aware of the multiple roles they may have to follow or they have some constrains to follow or to make these roles. In most of the cases teachers do self analysis and try to improve their teaching year by year, by modifying the schemes of work, guides and the lesson plans. Some of the teachers fail to maintain proper records, which is very much essential to build the profession in the right way according the roles of the teacher. This might lack the teacher to handle some of the important issues of the students and the management. An ideal teacher must be very organized by keeping the necessary records.
There are few teachers who thought that their main role and responsibility is to just follow the rules and regulations of the school and to teach the students in the prescribed hours. Obviously this view is different in the modern way of teaching. Most of the schools, the management will provide proper guidance and enough materials to teach in an effective way. Teachers are needed just to implement proper environment, where learning can take place.
Most of the time teachers are able to take the class if they are well prepared and the when class is normal. Certain circumstances the class may not be normal due to various reasons. In these situations the teacher should be a good communicator and a capable councilor. If the teacher fails to have these two essential roles in a disturbing situation definitely it will create misunderstandings and troubles in the class and will not be able to archive the target objectives. Most of our teachers are lacking these roles as they have alternatives like sending a student to the office. When a teacher faces a behavioural problem, it is more effective to solve these problems personally with the student, instead of taking it in to the school management. It helps to build a strong relation with the student and will develop the skill of counseling and effective and argumentative communicating of the teacher.
Teaching is a skill which combines the roles and responsibilities with the personal behaviour. Different teachers have different personality, since some of the roles are dependent on personality. There are few differences in the roles of different teachers. One teacher has revealed that the roles are the just the activities he does in the school while the other teacher describes the roles of a teacher as a roles of a responsible parent. So there are quite big differences in these roles according to these two teachers. Some teachers are thinking that the role of a teacher is fixed and limited according to the rules and regulations of the school and they are doing just the management asks them to do, nothing more and nothing less. So we can conclude that there are few differences in the understanding of the roles like constructive self analyses and to be a learning facilitator. Teachers who think that the management is a restriction or barrier to perform the multiple roles, have the idea of controlling the students in the traditional ways; by shouting and beating them, but those teachers who think that the management is an essential part of their teaching profession. These teachers control the students by persuading them to the lesson. They also think that a proper management can improve the ways of teaching by giving constructive feedbacks to their lessons.
An ideal teacher is expected to perform various roles as this profession is not only based on a single character. Different roles are different aspects that a teacher has to maintain and develop throughout the career. The most fundamental role of a teacher is to expand self knowledge through constructive self analysis according the needs of the developing world. This includes personal motivations, believes and values, needs and feelings, ethics, limits of personal responsibility and the power of personal modeling. An efficient teacher must be the one who has real concern about the self analyzing roles. To teach in the modern way or to stand in the right track of the teaching profession, the teacher needs to be a good researcher. He/she has to know what is going on and what are the things has to be dealing with and what are the new inventions and innovations in their field. The new contents which might need to teach in the near future have to be acquired well in advance to concentrate properly. For instance subjects like Economics, the teachers are required to have most recent information about the changing world economy.
Teaching is a life long learning process. One of the teachers has revived that they are learning every day by teaching the students. This is obviously true since each student is different in behaviour and the way and of learning. Among the teachers they have different learning styles. Once a teacher recognizes learning style-preferences, he/she should be better able to recognize his/her students.
Modern teachers are agreeing that the teacher should be a learning facilitator. In earlier days teachers are solely depend on the view of imparting the instructions from one head to another. But now this view is out of date. Moreover concerning on the view of imparting instructions, teachers should be acting as a learning facilitator. Students must be able to think their own; they should raise their own ideas and should be creative. To be a successful learning facilitator the teacher should be empathetic, warm and caring and a provider of specific, descriptive, and nonjudgmental feedback. Teachers also should be positive and respectful to others, open and genuine, a capable communicator, and interested in enlarging the students own knowledge and productively introspective. With these qualities the teacher can be an effective learning facilitator.
Even though we are interested in acting as a multi role teacher there are some constrains that the teachers are facing in the society or in the schools. To be a researcher or to stay updated, it requires a lot of resources. But due to various reasons some schools are unable to provide enough resources to the teachers to stay them up to date. Another major constrain, which is very common in our society, is the family problem of the students. Students are from broken families normally creating problems in the class. Teachers are facing problems to deal with such students as there are no one at home to support the student and the needs of the teacher. Teachers need proper support from the parents, as one teacher describes the role of a teacher as a parent. But there are teachers who do not agree with this view as they do not think that there are any importances of dealing with the community. To develop the teaching profession teachers need the help from the management. Some teachers are very skilful while the others require constructive help from the management. But in some schools teachers do not get the co operation to the extent they expect.
Conclusion
Teachers can overcome these constrains by making the management aware of the problems that they are facing. Definitely an effective management would have many alternative solutions for most of the problems. In some cases the teachers are reluctant to share their ideas with the management. An efficient and confident teacher will never hesitate to raise a question or share the ideas with anyone it may concern. Teachers must be open and genuine in all the aspects of teaching career and the helping profession must keep as a helping profession for ever.
REFERENCES:
- B.KEVIN & K.LEN.(0000) (Third edition).Beginning teaching and beyond.
- http://www.cdtl.nus.edu.sg
Multiple Roles of a Teacher Page of