The Profession of a Teacher
There are professions – vocations – and people surrender themselves
wholly to these professions. Undoubtedly, the profession of a teacher is one of them.
Even if you want to be a teacher you can’t become a good one. You
must be born one. Love for children, an ability to communicate with them, understand and
teach them – these are the most important qualities of a genuine teacher. An ability to
be a genuine teacher is God’s gift; it’s a talent like the talent of a writer, an
artist or a musician. In my point of view it’s even more – it’s fate. I think a
teacher is like a sculptor: he moulds a personality out of a child like a sculptor creates
a beautiful statue out of clay.
Pedagogy is a very complex and responsible study; probably, no less
responsible than medicine. As a patient hands to the doctor the most expensive thing –
his life, so parents entrust the teacher with the most valuable creature – their child.
And mainly it depends on a teacher what kind of person a child will grow up to be: a
genius or a villain. If you have been dreaming of become a teacher since your childhood,
it’s not a problem nowadays.
In Russia there are more than 250 teachers training colleges and
universities; six of them are in Moscow. Every year thousands of young people graduate
from these colleges to come to school on September 1st. According to a survey, more than
70 per cent of students enter these colleges by their own choice, and it is well-known to
them what difficult and sometimes ungrateful work is waiting for them after receiving
their diplomas. In the process of education when they were asked whether they were sorry
about their choice of profession, 60 per cent said that they were not sorry at all.
Judging by these facts, I can say that teachers come to school not for money (the salary
of a teacher is laughable), but they simply can’t help coming because it’s their
vocation to work with children.
The profession of a teacher combines both joy and sorrow.
A person who gets pedagogical training should master a lot of
knowledge. But the main thing he should understand is according to what laws and rules the
personality of a child develops. The most important of them are love and mercy. Doctors
have a rule: “Don’t do harm”. I think teachers must also follow this rule; because
there is nothing more valuable than children and it depends on teachers what kind of
people the children will become. In my opinion, a teacher is responsible for all his
pupils, for, according to Antoine de Saint Exupйry we are answerable for those whom we
have tamed.
By Daria Bitsigan, 11th year pupil
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