4 Questions You Should Ask Yourself When Starting Your Career As A Teacher

Being a teacher could be considered one of the essential roles in society. Teaching others, whether that may be children at a kindergarten or young minds within a college, is one of the highest honors that could ever be bestowed upon someone.

There is a tremendous amount of responsibility placed on those who teach. We have to ensure that we are not wasting our student’s time, that we can tap into their potential and that with our help, they can understand that learning can be an enjoyable experience. The pursuit of knowledge is an essential aspect of living, and it is the responsibility of the teacher to make sure students know this.

Here’s a list of questions you should think about during your first year of being a teacher. Regardless of the age of your students, what subject you teach, and how much time you spend with them, these questions will help you consider the more significant effects that your work has on others.

My answers to these questions are just opinions and are subject to change as I continue growing as a teacher. It’s okay to skim through them — the questions themselves are more important.

Education allows one to navigate the world with optimal skills. The best skill to cultivate is the ability to learn and to grow one’s curiosity. Without curiosity, people stagnate. Therefore those who cannot grow their curiosity have been cheated by their teachers to some degree. Education is supposed to produce active and capable thinkers, not only produce effective workers for society.

A teacher’s primary responsibility is not to teach a particular collection of information because the usefulness of information changes over time. Certainly, there is timeless information: always be kind to others, hard work is essential to be a useful member of a team, all work worth doing benefits should benefit other people, and question all sources of information. However, information taught with the primary concern of having students remember it for a test isn’t useful or timeless. It is the responsibility of the teacher to teach their students how to think and not what to think.

With the internet today, there is an abundance of information that doesn’t necessarily need to be committed to memory. Information that should be committed to mind should come from a source of interest. The student must seek the information that they desire to remember (and use) on their own. The teacher should only supply tools and strategies on how to question that information and utilize it.

Teachers are vital because they give the youth of society experienced perspectives. A teacher is a collection of questions that a student can gain insight from. Instead of praising students for the right answers to trivial questions, teachers should praise them for asking difficult and challenging questions.

The criteria by which we grade our students should be primarily focused on the quality of a student’s questions. When a student asks a question it allows them to ponder on the subject with the teacher and it allows the rest of the group to think of related questions to expand on the subject. It develops the web of thought that would not usually arise from trying to memorize a list of facts or even worse — learn a list of prewritten questions and answers for an exam.

Teachers are role models. They are examples of what adulthood will be like. Aside from the other adults in a child’s life, teachers provide a daily example of someone who thinks about essential questions that allow us to understand life on a deeper level.

The role of the student is to show up. Being present in the moment is their primary task. Depending on their age, students may need assistance to stay focused, which can be done through entertainment. Whatever is being taught must be exciting and thought-provoking.

As the student grows older, they have to find interest in the lessons on their own. However, this doesn’t excuse the teacher from showing passion and doing their best to make whatever is being taught interesting in some way. The student and teacher relationship is reciprocal. The student is only interested in the topic being discussed as much as the teacher is.

Eventually, once the student advances to the stage of adulthood their primary responsibilities are to both continue their own education by finding resources and tools to further their growth while at the same time finding ways to teach those younger than them. For the best student is someone who continues to teach themselves as well as teach others to reinforce their knowledge on the subject in question.

What are your thoughts on these questions? Do you have other ones that you believe I missed? Leave a comment!

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