Commenting on "I quit: why do so many young teachers abandon the profession?"
https://www.smh.com.au/opinion/i-quit-why-do-so-many-young-teachers-abandon-the-profession-20160126-gmebbu.html
Written on 16 February 2020
There is a Chinese saying, "It takes 10 years to grow a tree, but takes 100 years to grow a person".
Although all of us live on the same planet, many young people segmented themselves in their world of instant result and glorification, and therefore teaching is not really suited for them, even if teaching was their ideal and ambition when they were children.
There is a misconception and misuse of the words teacher and educator, and therefore the any articles referring teachers as educators are wrong.
While an educator is a skilled teacher, but not all teachers are educators. An educator does not focus on curriculum and syllabus like a teacher, but on development and progress.
During my time as a volunteer working handson in classrooms with prep and primary students, I met several young upcoming teachers in internship or workplacement. I can visualise the tough journey ahead of them. They may have the formal qualification, but lack the life experience to deal with rather unpredictable behaviour of young children and explosive behaviour of teenagers.
How can a young teacher, unlikely to possess the knack to pacify a child like a parent or handle a teenager even bigger in size? I had a student in a college who failed in his assignment wanted to punch me because he did not accept the verdict!
The big competence gap of students within a class is a complete nightmare for many experienced teachers, let alone the young ones. The education system decides that straming is bad for social interaction, and allows the very smart students to be among the very average and slow learners in a class.
Who should the teacher give more attention to? When attention is paid to one group, the others are left out and feel frustrated. The overall performance is just average, and that is not what a young teacher, or in fact for the experienced ones as well, aimed to achieve. The teachers might think that they fail to be good teachers!
Being passionate in teaching is not good enough. What they received in their formal training may not be adequate. They need to learn to be smart to deal with many different situations using "Sun Zi Bing Fa" - Sun Zi Strategies of War; they need to learn marketing to promote their presence in the class, develop techniques for the corrent teaching style and help the students to recogniose their learning styles.
Thank you for reading.
There is a Chinese saying, "It takes 10 years to grow a tree, but takes 100 years to grow a person".
Although all of us live on the same planet, many young people segmented themselves in their world of instant result and glorification, and therefore teaching is not really suited for them, even if teaching was their ideal and ambition when they were children.
There is a misconception and misuse of the words teacher and educator, and therefore the any articles referring teachers as educators are wrong.
While an educator is a skilled teacher, but not all teachers are educators. An educator does not focus on curriculum and syllabus like a teacher, but on development and progress.
During my time as a volunteer working handson in classrooms with prep and primary students, I met several young upcoming teachers in internship or workplacement. I can visualise the tough journey ahead of them. They may have the formal qualification, but lack the life experience to deal with rather unpredictable behaviour of young children and explosive behaviour of teenagers.
How can a young teacher, unlikely to possess the knack to pacify a child like a parent or handle a teenager even bigger in size? I had a student in a college who failed in his assignment wanted to punch me because he did not accept the verdict!
The big competence gap of students within a class is a complete nightmare for many experienced teachers, let alone the young ones. The education system decides that straming is bad for social interaction, and allows the very smart students to be among the very average and slow learners in a class.
Who should the teacher give more attention to? When attention is paid to one group, the others are left out and feel frustrated. The overall performance is just average, and that is not what a young teacher, or in fact for the experienced ones as well, aimed to achieve. The teachers might think that they fail to be good teachers!
Being passionate in teaching is not good enough. What they received in their formal training may not be adequate. They need to learn to be smart to deal with many different situations using "Sun Zi Bing Fa" - Sun Zi Strategies of War; they need to learn marketing to promote their presence in the class, develop techniques for the corrent teaching style and help the students to recogniose their learning styles.
Thank you for reading.
