Category Archives: Teachers’ Qualifications
What Makes A Great Teacher
Some have wrongly thought that if they know a subject matter then they can teach it. Some have claimed the title teacher, mentor, professor or what-have-you just because they know a great deal in a field of study. It takes more than knowledge to become a teacher, a lot more to become a good one, and a whole lot more to be great.
Being good at Math doesn’t make one a Math teacher. Having a perfect accent and impeccable grammar doesn’t make a person an English teacher. And if by luck, accident, mistake or necessity, a person was given a teaching load by virtue of just being good at a particular field then that’s very unfortunate, a disservice to the teaching profession.
There’s a whale of difference between knowing a subject matter and knowing how to teach it. It is not a guarantee that when one is an expert in a domain of knowledge that he could be a teacher in that field. Perhaps he has the potential to become one for he already possesses one of the requirements to become a teacher…and that is mastery in a discipline. But expertise in a field, knowing what to teach, is just the beginning of the journey we call teaching.
Source: What Makes A Great Teacher
On Grades and the Hiring Process
The reason students are so obsessed in getting the highest grades possible (A+ or 1 or 5 or what have you) is that the higher the grades arrayed in the transcript of records the higher is their chance of getting employed. This is the paradigm that the academe and society in general slowly constructed in the consciousness of these young people as they grow up and develop as individuals.
This is the way they are trained and developed in a society that thrives on competition. Society has devised a way of identifying the cream of the crop, the top dogs among young people. It’s like the government and the corporate world, in connivance with the academic community, concocted a scheme of pinpointing who among the young populace are the best prospects for leadership positions in both the public and the private sectors in the future. Who among them will be managers and supervisors, who will stay in the rank and file and who will do the dirty jobs. They put tags on them to make sure that they are identifiable during selection processes in the future. And what are those tags? GRADES!
So, the young graduates have tags, their grades listed in their transcript of records. They (the graduates) think that when they are recruited for jobs by the government and the private sectors they have the indelible marks. If they don’t have the As they’re doomed, unlikely to be hired or if ever hired they will be relegated to the lowliest positions forever.
The best and the brightest, the ones with As, they thought, are the only ones who would get hired easily and be given the choicest positions.
Students need to be told that grades are not the be-all and end-all of education. They need to understand that schooling is not just a preparation for a place in the world of work but for life in general.
Students need to understand that while it’s true that good grades are important, it does not guarantee employment. It does not follow that when in your transcript of records you have all As then certainly both the public and the private sectors would open their doors to let you in.
The transcript of records, where the HOLY As are listed, is but an attachment to a curriculum vitae which when submitted constitute only step 1 of a 4-step hiring process.
Having As would certainly create an initial good impression but no company or organization worth its salt would hire people only on the basis of GRADES.
Hiring has always been a 4-step process.
STEP 1: Submission of Resume and corresponding documents and attachments
STEP 2: Interview (or a series of interviews)
STEP 3: Tests (Intelligence, Aptitude and Psychological)
STEP 4: Demonstration of Skills
Companies and organizations who are serious in the trade they are plying know that the best way to filter applicants is make them undergo all the steps aforementioned.
No organization will hire an applicant after presenting a transcript of records with nothing but As. There are organizations who render a decision to hire or not after STEP No. 2. That’s their prerogative.
But if the intent is to get the best people then none of the steps should be dispensed with, most specially STEP No. 4, the demonstration of skills. The real capability of an applicant can not be efficiently measured in an interview. Applicants can not just rhetorically explain what are they are capable of doing. They should be made to show and prove what they could, not tell it.
So, students who may not get the highest academic marks (A+ or 1 or 5 or what have you) need not despair. They just need to prepare and make sure they are ready for the job interview, the tests, and most importantly , the demonstration of skills.
Those who get the highest grades are not always the best and brightest, specially in settings where the Grave Curve is implemented.
“IF YOU KNOW IT, YOU CAN TEACH IT”
That’s a fallacy.
The scary thing is that many seem to have embraced the idea… that if you know something you can teach it. And they are now in the classrooms calling themselves TEACHERS.
Teaching is more than “mastery of the subject matter.” One may have an accumulation of knowledge or may possess a special skill but it is not a guarantee that he could effectively consummate a transfer of that knowledge and skill to a recipient – the LEARNER. Knowing one thing” is different from “knowing how to teach what you know.”
If teaching is an iceberg, “mastery of the subject matter” is just its tip. We can even say that it’s just the tip of half of the iceberg for teaching is just one side of the coin we call Education, the other side being learning.
To say that “If you know it, you can teach it!” is tantamount to saying that just about anybody who knows something could be a teacher.
Being a teacher entails not just knowing “what to teach” but more importantly “how to teach it.” It does not follow that when you are good at Math then you can teach Math. It is difficult to assume that when you know a language you can teach that language. Being knowledgeable and skillful in one area is just one cornerstone of effective teaching. Learning is not yet in that equation.
Becoming a teacher is a tedious process. “Knowing what to teach” and “knowing how to teach it” are merely the icing of a multi-layered function of a teacher. While mastering a certain field of specialization a would-be teacher also need to study the nature of the learner. While memorizing the “A to Z” and the “one to infinity” of a subject anybody who wishes to embrace the vocation (or call it profession) must understand the intricacies of the learning process. That he should not be concerned only with teaching but also learning.
Those who think that knowledge and skills in their fields of endeavors are enough to qualify as a teacher must do a lot of thinking. Teaching and learning are both grounded on Philosophy, Psychology, Sociology and many other fields of learning. There are also principles and strategies one need to learn to effectively deliver teaching and learning. There are methods one need to get acquainted with so teaching will not become a matter of “the blind leading the blind.”
The aforementioned can’t be learned overnight. It’s a tedious process, as previously mentioned. Thus, professionals in other fields who want to become teachers with good intentions enroll in crash courses for teachers before applying for a position in the academe. And when educational administrators hire non-education professionals for they see in them a promise of becoming good teachers they make sure that the latter would undergo rigid training in pedagogy before they deploy them in the classrooms.
If one has no time and resources to enroll in a crash course for teachers, there are books on teaching and learning that can be read. Available on-line are vast quantity of materials that can also be downloaded. The only problem with this scheme is that there will be no actual practice teaching and training in the preparation of lesson plans and learning modules.
So, if you know it don’t teach it yet. First learn how to teach it.
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Source of Image Used: learn4real.co.uk
M.A.D. LIGAYA
M.A.D. L I G A Y A 