By David Williamson.
In spring, students are looking forward to graduation and/or summer vacation, or perhaps to fall and what might be possible socially as well as academically. I think of the teachers who have made this school year effective and point to the future with hopefulness.
Teaching is of the largest and most important fields of modern work. It includes pre-school though postgraduate education as well as vocation-specific training. So much of the wellbeing of any society spends on the foundational work of its teachers.
I am a “lifelong learner,” and my own adult children each have their graduate degrees; I anticipate that their children will have graduate education as well. In addition, my wife and I have both are enrolled in a couple of different learning situations and value the skills of our current teachers.
Teachers are in demand at the moment, as there as been a lot of attrition from teaching in the last few years. Several kinds teaching positions are listed in the O-Net database as having a “bright outlook” for employment. There are and will be for the foreseeable future many job opportunities for qualified and skilled teachers.
Social skills are essential to teaching, including accurate listening and basic problem solving, and the capacity to understand the group and personal situations of each learning context. There is a skill to expanding a student’s awareness and teaching them how to search for information.
Perhaps facilitating a love for learning is the primary skill of a teacher at all levels. This usually involves helping the student become aware of and sensitive to the next level of learning appropriate to the student. This requires the teacher to consider carefully what is in the student’s best interest.
A skilled teacher is a translator of the content of the subject to the actual capacity of the student to benefit from the teaching. This involves translation, helping the student at their current level of understanding and readiness to search for information at the next level. This requires exceptional discernment of the student, their capacity and desire, along with what might be available in the next step.
The conscious Christian remembers that Jesus is the master teacher and is often called “rabboni,” or “ teacher.” So teaching is a vocation with distinct importance in the Christian community. Indeed, Jesus as “teacher” demonstrates all of the above identified traits or skills. This indeed is a very high calling!
The Green Room 