Career tip: Challenges in teaching

By THOMAS HUKAHU
IN last week’s article, I discussed the possibility of you leaving a job for another, or taking on promotion.
In this article, I will discuss the challenges and advantages in a teaching career, if you are interested in pursuing it.
A teacher is someone who instructs others by passing on knowledge or skills that s/he mastered.
S/he can be someone teaching specialised subjects in schools, or a lecturer or tutor in a college or university.
Sunday or Sabbath school teachers, as well as preachers, are also teachers. They teach people from the Bible to better equip themselves and grow in their spiritual lives.
A lot of what I will be discussing here will be relevant for the secondary level. Do make the appropriate applications to the level that you may want to work in.
What I am discussing is brief. Speak with a teacher to get more information.

Teaching at which level
If you want to go into teaching, you have to decide which level you would want to work in – elementary, primary, secondary or tertiary.
If you like working with younger children, you will have to study to get a diploma in education.
If you want to teach secondary school students, you will have to get a degree.
If you get a degree in science, technology or humanities, you should do a one-year postgraduate diploma in education at the University of Goroka to study teaching skills as well as education psychology and philosophies of education systems.
If you are planning to tutor or lecture at the university or college level, completing a master’s degree or higher in your chosen field should be your goal.
If you want to tutor or lecture, I would urge you to take the time to learn the basic skills in teaching to become more effective in your lectures.
Lecturers in universities do not need to do a diploma in teaching, however it will be to their advantage that they learn such skills and apply them where they are.
With today’s information age and internet, you can learn a lot by going online and learning about such skills.

The lesson plan
Any teacher who wants to be effective in teaching must prepare a lesson plan. That is, write on paper the four main parts of the lesson plan – the objective(s) or aim(s) of the lesson, the introduction, the body and conclusion.
In a way, it is similar to someone preparing a speech. A good speech has those main parts too.
Generally, before the lesson is started, good teachers write the title of the lesson on the board. That helps direct the minds of students to the lesson.
In the lesson plan of a mathematics (geometry) lesson, the objective may be to learn about the sum of the interior angles in a quadrilateral (like a rectangle).
The introduction must attract the students into what the lesson is about.
This is better done when the teacher reviews previous lesson’s work to link with today’s lesson, a case of “going from the known to the unknown”.
In the geometry lesson the teacher can review what the students did in previous lessons on the sum of angles in a triangle (which is 180 degrees).
The body is the main part of the lesson.
This is where the teacher goes over the concepts to be taught in this lesson, examples of problems solved and exercises or questions for students to do.
For the geometry lesson, the teacher can draw a quadrilateral on the board, draw a diagonal and split the shape into two triangles and ask students what could be the sum of the angles in the quadrilateral. (They should say 360 degrees, the sum of 180 and 180.)
Examples of calculating missing angles then can be given and that followed by exercises.
In the conclusion, the lesson is quickly reviewed, exercises corrected and time given for students to ask questions.
Homework can also be given here.
So, those are the main parts of the lesson.
All good teachers prepare a lesson plan before a lesson is given.
It is the same with someone trying to make a speech or a preacher preaching a sermon. For effective delivery, the talk must be written before it is delivered.
Note that good speakers do not actually read a speech from their notes, they speak to the audience. They have internalised the contents of their speech and do not have to read what they have written, word for word.

Challenges in teaching
Many young people do not want to pursue a teaching career because they say it is hard work. They think a teacher will talk all day and exert a lot of energy to control a room of bustling children who just cannot sit still.
That may be true in some sense, but it is not completely true.
People who join the service usually work the hardest in preparing lessons and getting to know the syllabus that they will teach in the first two to three years.
They stay up late into the afternoon or night preparing their lessons and resources for students.
After those first few years, their teaching preparation (as in preparing lesson plans) should be less toilsome as they can refer to the plans they had prepared in past years.
They only need to add other useful pieces or make changes to how they present a topic now that they have thought through the lessons better.
My father, who was a former teachers’ college principal back in the 1970s, once said to my relatives and me about 23 years ago: “Teachers, among lawyers and engineers, are true professionals. When the day ends, they do not just sleep, they have to prepare for the next day.”
That is a very practical statement. A teacher’s preparation of a lesson today (as in writing up a lesson plan) determines its effectiveness tomorrow.
It is a bit like someone preparing a speech or sermon. A well-thought out speech or sermon is enjoyed by an audience, while an ill-prepared speech can be boring.
Another challenge in teaching is that teachers are supposed to be with their students at all times.
It is something that heads of schools always remind teachers on. Students cannot be left unattended because young people can think of a good number of silly things to do when they are on their own.
Adults working with junior staff, who are adults, can leave their colleagues and go away for hours and return to find their staff carrying on superbly without any hassle. That would not be the case for teenagers in school. In a way, teachers become parents or guardians of children too.
Dealing with disciplinary matters too is a real challenge for teachers.
Teenagers under their care need to be corrected, not once but again and again.
Correcting students and telling them the consequences of their actions is something that all teachers would be expected to do.
Teaching is not just teaching about English or mathematics, it is also about guiding and nurturing the young minds and hands of tomorrow, the people who would carry the country forward in the future.
The work is tough and challenging but not impossible.
Those are the main challenges in teaching.
 
Advantages in teaching
Here are some advantages of becoming a secondary school teacher.
Firstly, you will better master what you learned in college or university.
A teacher will better explain the process of respiration (in science), or the parts of speech (in language learning) than graduates who never taught those concepts.
To teach properly, a teacher has to review what s/he knows already as well as dig deeper to better explain the concepts.
Secondly, the mastery of the concepts at the secondary level will enable the teacher to be a better lecturer, if s/he plans to move up to teach at the tertiary level.
A teacher knows how to simplify concepts, something that some lecturers find hard to do.
Thirdly, a teacher can be a very resourceful person in other fields, if s/he makes a switch in career.
A teacher going into journalism has a lot of background knowledge that journalism graduates may not have accessed.
For example, a business studies teacher would know a lot of business concepts and history and could make a good business reporter. The same goes for a science teacher.
A teacher who becomes a lawyer would already have mastered the art of speaking before an audience and should not struggle with presenting a good case in court.
Fourthly, a teacher would better guide his or her own children in learning because the skills that s/he uses in the classroom can be applied at home.
Some of the best innovations in the world have been made by people whose parents were either teachers or lecturers in universities. They learned stuff at home.
Thomas Edison, the American inventor’s mother was a former school teacher and supported him in his quest to find answers to his queries. The Google founders also had parents who were computer science or mathematics lecturers.
Fifthly, after a teacher retires s/he can still be a useful member of the community as in organising meetings for various projects or programmes.
Former teachers have been known to have worked as village councillors in organising their people working together in making their environment safer and friendlier.
Sixthly, teachers can also write books, textbooks or a memoir.
Sir PauliasMatane, PNG’s own prolific writer, was a former teacher and school inspector before becoming a department secretary and eventually governor-general.
His depth of knowledge about education has made him a good writer that informs our people on various themes, including learning to live well with oneself and others.
In a teacher’s career, there will be many interesting stories – of struggles, challenges and successes. They can be compiled in the form of a memoir.
Lastly, but not the least, a teacher can say s/he has an input in the lives of people who are now engineers, doctors, lawyers, journalists or even pilots. Those professionals were once his or her students.
That can be extremely satisfying.

Fast tips for future teachers
First tip: Prepare well for every lesson.
The basic rule to keep in teaching is preparation – write your lesson plan.
If you can prepare well, you will make learning enjoyable for the students.

Second tip: Make concepts relevant to what they are learning.
I worked with some mathematics students recently on statistics (management of data) and told them that it has come to my notice over the years that in today’s world data is key. Data is money.
(Today universities even have a specific course called data science and people get trained to be data scientists.)
It is data, or information, of users of Facebook or Google, that these firms can use to make money with.
The two firms can advertise products of other firms to its users for a little fee (of $0.30 or so). Every click on an advertisement generates an income for the firms.
When you have billions of people using Facebook or Google and a percentage of them are clicking on the ads of any firm, you can imagine how much money they make.

Third tip: Manage your class.
Ensure that people are ready to learn. Try to have students concentrating and doing what they should be doing.
If you cannot manage them, refer them to the deputy principal or principal so that those who distract others are addressed and hopefully make a change in their behaviour.
Taking them on a picnic or excursion is part of managing them too.

Fourth tip: Learn to motivate the children to learn.
Tell them that learning to be the best at what they do is preparing them for their future – a future where they will buy their own food and pay their bills, a future that should be enjoyed.

Fifth tip: You must continue to learn.
As a teacher, you must continue to learn. If you do not stop learning, your students will also not stop learning.

• Next week: Challenges in journalism. Thomas Hukahu is a freelance writer.