Class apart
Usha Albuquerque

This is the time, exam time and admission time, when we think of our teachers and rush to them for help. For the rest of the year, most students bunk classes, ignore teachers, and give a low rating to teaching as a career. Yet, teaching as a profession attracts large numbers of young people who look upon it as a secure professional career with shorter working hours and regular annual vacations.

Teaching today is more than that. Shaping young minds and enabling them to maximise their potential is but one side of the picture. The tribulations in obtaining a seat even at the elementary school level, the amount of money charged as school fees and the mushrooming of private tutorials and institutes offering coaching classes indicate the various demands of education today, and the enormous opportunities for those in this profession.

As a career it has always attracted large numbers of women. It offers them an opportunity to do a professional job during school hours and term time, with a shorter workday, even though the normal workload may extend far beyond the formal end of the school day. Today, teaching is also attracting young men, as the mushrooming of international class schools and educational institutions of higher learning is making teaching one of the fastest growing hot opportunities of the future.

There are several areas of work in a teaching career. These include, teachers at the elementary school level, trained graduate teachers and postgraduate teachers at the secondary and senior secondary school levels. At higher educational levels, there are posts of lecturer in colleges, readers and professors in universities, as well as administrators, supervisors, consultants and researchers.

The work of a teacher varies according to the level of the job and the institution.

At the nursery level, the teacher is responsible for social, emotional and intellectual growth of children, and acts as a kind of surrogate parent, while in junior school, teachers instruct one or more groups of students between ages 7-12 and normally take their classes for all subjects.

The secondary school teacher instructs students in junior and senior school, normally in a specific subject and, therefore, needs a good grounding in the subject. Most secondary school teachers have responsibilities in addition to their subject teaching, such as social education programmes and a range of extra-curricular activities from sports and drama to school outings.

In a college or university, a lecturer delivers lectures to a class of students, and devotes time to research and writing and publishing articles, while a reader or a professor in a university spends a considerable amount of time on research activities and guiding students in research projects.

Some teachers branch off from the teaching path to become administrators, to supervise the functioning of their educational institutions. Their primary task is school management. It includes planning of time-tables, utilising of teacher's talents, organising school activities, interacting with parents and educational authorities.

The educational requirements for the different levels of teaching vary.

• A graduate with a nursery training certificate, diploma or degree is the basic requirement for nursery or primary school teaching. Preference is given to those trained for pre-school education, such as the Montessori or kindergarten pattern.

• For junior school, the eligibility requirement is a graduate or postgraduate degree with 55 per cent marks and a diploma or degree in teaching/education. In addition, the candidate must have studied at least one of the teaching subjects during graduation.

• A postgraduate degree in the subject and a B.Ed degree is the basic requirement for secondary and senior secondary school teachers.

• A lecturer or instructor in college needs to have a post-graduate degree with a certificate of eligibility for lectureship, the National Eligibility Test (NET) from the University Grants Commission. A Ph.D-holder with experience as a tutor is also eligible, while a Ph.D-holder with three years’ experience as lecturer/assistant professor is the eligibility for a reader’s post.

• A professor in a university department must be a Ph.D holder with at least 10 years’ experience in teaching, of which five years must be as assistant professor.

The Bachelor of Education (B.Ed) course is of one-year duration, the basic eligibility for which is graduation. The basic eligibility for the Masters of Education (M.Ed.) course is a postgraduate degree in the subject, along with a B.Ed. degree. The Ph.D can be done over a period of time, up to a maximum time limit of 10years.

Practically every university offers both Bachelor’s and Master‘s degree in education and teaching, as well as diploma courses in teaching. A few of the prominent educational institutions include—University of Delhi, Delhi, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, S.N.D.T. Women’s University, Mumbai, Sophia Polytechnic, Bhulabhal Desai Road, Mumbai, University of Calcutta, Calcutta, University of Madras, Chennai and many others.

It is often assumed that anybody unable to get into any other job can take up teaching. However, more than academic qualifications, you need special personal qualities to become a good teacher. Patience and enthusiasm are among the primary requirements for a teacher. A desire for learning and teaching, a sense of fair play, self-discipline, organising ability and a genuine ability to reach out to another and to give of yourself.

Once qualified, there are hundreds of job offers awaiting a qualified teacher. Schools in government, government aided, private, public and convent schools are the main areas of work for primary and secondary school qualified professionals. Moreover, teachers can give private tuition to students or even open tutorial / coaching classes.

While college and university appointments require those qualified through NET, many private institutes and polytechnics take on those with specialised skills and qualifications.

Today, there are also a growing number of institutions catering to the special requirements of children with specific learning disabilities, and physical or mental handicaps. The work here is emotionally and physically demanding, therefore, specialised training is required in dealing with these specific problems.

In addition, there is a new whole parallel education system of tutorials and coaching classes, distance education programmes, consultancies for various courses and study programmes in India and abroad, career counselling, and so on, that also require trained professionals. So also do vocational and technical institutes providing learning in a range of skills from mass communication and filmmaking to beauty care, computers and dance choreography. Moreover setting up schools- both nursery schools as well as secondary schools, as an entrepreneurial venture has also become big business today.

The low level of salaries for teaching has in the past been a great disincentive for those who might have gone into this profession. But with the general upgrading of pay scales, particularly for the central government appointments and the new private schools, that are attracting good teachers with high qualifications, salaries have seen a marked improvement. Fringe benefits such as accommodation at nominal rent, subsidised fees for the children of teachers, pension and gratuity are often other attractions.

But the major attraction is that apart from the salaries and perks, teachers are entitled to regular paid vacations when schools / universities are closed. Moreover, working hours are not too prolonged for teachers and they can utilise the rest of the time in cultivating other interests.

Those getting into this field also need to bear in mind that there can be a lot of monotony in a teacher’s profession. The pressures of the job also include constant reading and updating of one’s knowledge. So a good teacher is one who commands respect and is able to think of ways to make the lessons interesting and more appealing to students. If you have these qualities and love teaching those around you, then dive straight into the one profession that will enable you to be remembered long after you retire. After all, who forgets their teachers?