Teaching Is an Art to Cope

趙紅霞

Is that teaching so easy that anyone can be a teacher； anybody can claim to teach and train kids？ If we take a bird eye view of our todays society， with great sorry we need to acknowledge that most of the failures of their respective fields become teachers. For instance a student of economics couldnt get any proper job related to his profession； he can easily find his position in any of kindergarten or kids training school. You may find a graduate with computer science may be teaching kids social studies or an interior designer might be teaching kids basic concepts of science to make his living.

At the beginning these professionals hardly know how to deal with kids and what to do with lessons， because it is not their field of expertise and with the passage of time many of them would improve their teaching skills and may prove themselves the best teachers. But what to say about their early years of joining， the stage where their heart are broken by the grim failure in their professional fields and then join teaching for the sake of money or for the time being. I am surprised how the parents dare， let these types of people to be trainers or tutors of their kids. Might be they ignore the fact that the gold medalist of the subject chemistry cannot be the best teacher for their innocent kids.

The institutes hiring a teacher or the parents hiring a tutor for their kids just seeing his excellence academic records， for them I have a question. If an expensive canvass very dear to me， I need an artist to make a masterpiece on it. May I let anyone without skills to take the task and try his skills on my unique canvass？ Must be relaxed in my mind， trying on my canvass he would acquire the expertise and can make a masterpiece for me？ Or should I go for someone whose expertise are already like a professional. For sure any wise will go for the second option. This is the right approach what we need to attain while hiring someone for teaching post， no matter its in collage， university or in a kindergarten.

Our kids and their grooming personalities are like a precious canvass， what an artist is drawing on it， whats his accuracy and expertise of dispersal of colors on it is directly related to the future of our kids. A passionate teacher， whose dream was to become a teacher， will assure his performance as compared to an accounts student， who acquires his education to become an accountant， not a teacher. This is a bitter fact of our society which we are neglecting， sometime intentionally or some time unintentionally.

Other than the unprofessional we have some teachers who really work hard and burn their blood and sweat instead of mid night oil， but it seems like all their sweat trod into the soil not to bloom even a single daisy. It seems that teachers all diligence fall flat on students. This mostly happens to unprofessional or impassionate teachers but some professional teachers also may undergo this critical situation. The reason is maybe they are not fully aware of a good teachers attributes.

In the past it was enough for a teacher to have full knowledge of a particular subject or to have an excellent command on that. For teachers it was enough to know the rudiments of some subjects， But now as our kids have exposure to the vastness of the whole world via internet access. Their quires and suspicious nature is beyond the bare bones and they want to learn something more than that of their text books contain. Although their knowledge may not be compared to that of teacher by its depth or measures but might be their knowledge would be latest then that of teacher. So before facing these kids having world on their palms a teacher needs to get armed with latest and accurate information that can quench the thrust of intellectual entities called students.

Many teachers may consider themselves “teachers the master of their subjects”， but teaching I inseparable from learning and enhancing ones knowledge. So teachers must try to learn more and more with the preparation of every day lesson， with the delivery of every day lecture， and with the evaluation of every class， which maybe is conduct by students mostly or by guardians of kids or supervisors of institutions.

Before entering the class they need to focus more deeply on the methodology which they are going to apply on kids today. Because their teaching is just like a social sciences test which a researcher applies on its given population， but the difference is only that a researcher may evaluate the aftereffects of its applied test but a teacher merely bother the results of its per day lecture. Because our education system evaluates the annual or final results， that has nothing to do with the teachers daily performance. In some schools teachers performance is checked on weekly or more often. I have observed that the kids level of learning and difference of their intellectuals is not big as the schools where teachers are enjoying the prestige of teaching as “might is right”.

Sometimes kids find teachers methods greatly boring them or fail to find even a single corner of attraction in the lecture for what they can pay their attentions or for what they can lend their ears to teachers speech. In this situation only the students sitting on front desks find themselves bound to listen teachers and the rest of the class remain busy in their personal thinking and in the worst condition they suppose to get themselves busy in their leisure activities e.g. drawing undefined sketches on notebook， rearranging pencils in pencil box， unnecessarily sharpening pencils or may be busy in telling the self made stories to deskmate.

To cope with these entire situations and to drag their attention back to the class， teachers need to make their lectures attractive and interactive. A professional teachers class is not like a one man show， where he reads， explains， and assigns homework to students. But its two way flow of information， where students get ideas of teacher and teacher on other end is vulnerable to get students notions， no matter how raw they are， he patiently receives them and smartly make them reasonable.

The art of teaching and lock， stock and barrel of it are difficult to address here as its an ever changing subject. But to decide who can be a good teacher is as easy as to choose a true artist among many jugglers with painted face. Teaching， the most privileged profession in the world， no doubt， today has become a paid social service. But we still need to take it as a social service in true spirits not as sake of job.

【責編 張景賢】