Who is a teacher?

A teacher is a person who provides knowledge and improve skills of his or her students whether
at home or schools (Wikipedia). Teacher is one who shapes up the whole life of the students
through his/her knowledge, patients, love and care. Teachers are the very important people in the
society who take the mind status to raise the mind status and living standard of the common
people through their magic ways of teaching. Parents have lots of expectations from the teachers
of their kids. The role of teachers varies from inside the classroom to the outside of the
classroom. However there are good and bad teachers as well.

Before coming to the classroom a good teacher will well prepared to make sure he/she achieve
his/her goal for the day. Every teachers have different qualities of teaching their students. They
vary in their knowledge, skills and attitudes in teaching specific subject. They try their best and
do all efforts in helping us and achieve our goals in life. School life is the time where we meet a
lot of new friends, participating in sports, debates, field trips and many more which we will
never forget in our life. As said by J. Kempler, school life is considered as the best time of
everyone’s life as this is the time when everyone learn basic things about life and different
subjects.

A good teacher are also the best friends of their students who help guided them to reach their
destination in life. There are many teachers in any schools and colleges but only one of them
become the favorite of any students according to his/her performance. Teachers set our goals in
education because of their unique and effective teaching and learning process. They teach us to
have positive attitudes towards life. A good teacher is the one who only gives his/her students
but nothing accept whole life instead he /she become happy with the success of students (G.
Williamson, 2008, 28). A best teacher is the one who provides a best model of future generation
to his/her nation. Proper education is the only way to remove social issues, and corruption from
the nation which will lead to real growth and development of a nation. In the body the discussion
will elaborate on some of the attributes of a teacher, roles of a teacher and the responsibilities of
a teacher.

Qualities of a teacher.
A teacher plays an important role in school. They are not simply to impart knowledge, but also
mould the habits, traits and characters of student. Their roles and responsibilities is to achieve the
educational objectives through the curriculum of the school. According to an article titled
“qualities, roles and responsibilities of teachers” state that in order for a teacher to carry out its
duties effectively they must possess certain qualities and qualification. The first one is General
Academic Background. The teacher must be able to answer all questions that are ask by the
students regarding the field he or she is specialized in. they should have broad knowledge so that
the delivery of information is precisely clear to the student as they concerned. However, it
depends on the qualification of a teacher, and the content knowledge which they attain. All
teachers that taught in all levels of education are according to their qualification. For instance, an
elementary teachers can be a certificate holder, primary school teacher with a diploma, high
schools or secondary schools with degree and tertiary institution with MA. In so doing, the
knowledge if transfer in an orderly manner according to the level of understanding within each
level or grades. The second one is Professional efficiency. A good teacher is not always someone

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with the content knowledge of a subject. A poor teacher can be the best teacher, and it depends
on how you as a teacher interacts with the students and how you deliver the content to them.
Moreover, a good teacher must have some pre-service training so that they are familiar with
teach and outcome of teaching. While in service they should attend short term refresher courses,
workshops, seminars and educational conferences so that they goes on adding to this professional
efficiency (ibid, 19). Also they should be dedicated to teaching and teach enthusiastically.
Teacher’s enthusiasm, professional insight and sense of dedication are his valuable asset (Brandy
Quotes).

Third one is the personality traits. Teachers’ personal characteristic have greater and deep
impact on students. To become the best role model to your students’ teachers must build good
relationship with their student. In so boing teachers must have some important characteristics.
Some of them are;
I. Love for children
The teacher must love their students. They must understand them individually and try to help in
overcoming their difficulties. Their attitude must be sympathetic and friendly.
II. A man of character.
The teacher must be emotionally stable. They must be free from complexes, worries and
frustration. An emotionally unstable teacher cannot do justice to his work.
III. Good Expression
The teacher must be able to express his thoughts clearly and also his oral and written expression
must be good. They must write reports of their students so the students can know their strength
and weaknesses. Moreover their speech, pronunciation and voice must be impressive to students.
IV. Sense of humour
In the school teacher must have smiling face and a cheerful look while teaching. Their sense of
humour will help them to overcome very serious situations, which can be sometimes laugh away.

V. Social Characteristics
The teacher must be friendly in nature. They must maintain good relationship with their
colleagues, students and their parents and general public. They must also be flexible to address
all level of people. In doing so they will be able to develop social qualities in students.
VI. Leadership Qualities
Teachers should be able to provide effective leadership to the students because the students are
immature and they need a lot of guidance in their study, activities and other courses so that the
Students follow the right track in the walk of life.

Role of the Teacher

Many people think that teaching is a very simple job, where a teacher stands in front and talk but
it isn’t like that. Paul Hencel argued in his article that teaching is a very complicated job. It is not
only about communication of knowledge to the students. In order for a teacher to efficiently
deliver knowledge to the students there are number of factors that are teacher must attend to.

To deliver a successful lessons to the students teachers must plan their lessons regularly. They
must also motivate their students by using different methods and techniques that is suitable for
teaching specific groups of student. They must try to improve their teaching skills and should
giving home work to students and check to make corrections regularly. By doing that it will

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increase the learning ability of students. In order to be a successful teacher, the teacher must plan
his work well. At the first place he/she should plan their teaching work and also decide how
much work is to be done in a particular month or in a particular week. Daily teaching work and
use of teaching aid must also be planned in advance. What types of activities the students will do
must also be planned. Moreover teacher has to organize a number of activities in the school.
Some of the things includes sporting events, work parades and also they must make sure that
their classroom are well equipped and organize the seating arrangement of the students,
distribute equipment and keep it clean. In addition, they have to organize instructional works by
dividing the syllabus into units, classification of students, construction of time table and core
curricular activities are also to be organized (J. Kempler, 2000, 16).

Another thing a teacher must do is to supervise. Teacher must not only supervise the students
and their work only but also required to supervise their attendance, their daily work, homework,
their work habits and behavior. Evaluating is another aspect of a teacher. Work of the students
and their participation must be evaluated from time to time. “It is evaluation which will throw
light to teacher’s work and students’ achievement.” Evaluation will point out weaknesses in
teaching and learning process and the teacher can make improvement through learning from
mistakes. Also teacher has to conduct house test and report the progress to the parents and
headmaster. Promotion of a teacher comes through the process of evaluation. Recording as well
is very important, the teacher has to maintain records of students’ achievement in different
subjects and activities also students admission date, attendance and their scores in different test
must be recorded. Teachers may also be required to maintain school records such as supply of
equipment or issue of book. Also teachers must write an annual reports of various activities and
function carried out through the year. Another important trait a teacher must master is the
relation between the students, their parents and the general public. The relationships with parents
will solve many problems. Not parents and students only but teacher must expand their
relationship with their colleague and headmaster, for all this the teacher should possess a friendly
nature.

Responsibilities of a teacher.
Education is one of the key areas in which determines the development of all countries around
the world. Now we can see some powerful countries that carried out scientific research creating
all kinds of technology, medicine and nuclear weapons are all result of education. It is through
education that they gain such knowledge to create those complicated things. However Teacher is
the main player in this scenario. Teachers are the main player in the nation building through their
efforts and commitment in shaping, molding, equip, and producing the quality human resource of
a country. During schooling days students spend most of their time with teachers and in those
hours teachers take the responsibility of parents to take care of them, imparting knowledge in
them and influence them in many areas of their lives. Most persons behaviors and characters are
influence by their teachers because from elementary all the way up to college, bit by bit, teachers
have influence them in their little ways, whether it is in the class room, out on the field trip or
during school sports and many other activities that the students participate in school.

Also another responsibility of a teacher is to utilize curriculum of a school. Without teachers

school building, furniture and equipment, and the text book are meaningless thus teacher is there
to fully utilizing them and perform effectively to enhance the learning of students and directs

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them in the right part of their future journey to fulfill their dreams and ambitions as by Cochran
Smith “teachers are the great knowledge, prosperity and enlightenment to which anyone can
benefit for whole life” teacher plays an essential responsibility in the field of education who
teaches students very nicely to be a person of good moral and behavior. They equip students with
lots of knowledge, skills and positive skills and attitudes so that students can never feel lost.
They help students to achieve their goals of education through clear vision and ideas. Without
teachers in life one cannot grow mentally, socially and intellectually.

To conclude, teacher’s profession is considered as the best and ideal profession in the world as
they provide generous duty to shape someone’s life. As the prosperity of a country greatly
depend on the education, the great roles and responsibility are given to the teachers to nourished
and shape up the lives of young ones and future of their country as well. however to develop
such quality individual it depend learning effective learning and the quality of a teacher and how
the teacher execute its roles in implementing and carried out some of the behaviour management
(BMP) policy effectively in school and in the classroom. Some of the quality a teacher needs to
acquire are love for children, be a man of character, must have good expression towards the
students, sense of humour, social characteristic and leadership quality.

If a teacher master all this qualities his teaching will be very effective and motivated. As the
result they can create a good society because it will create a right path for the student in life as
well as make them able to make right decisions in bad situations. Therefore as we can see
teachers are the most important asset and backbone of a country or nation because they plays a
major role in developing the human resource.

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 References

1. Williamson, G and Clevenger, M. (2008). Rethinking teacher capacity, New York Press,
New York City.
2. http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/education/policy/strategicframework/doc/teacher competences-
en- pdf.
3. Kempler, J. and Patrick, T. (2000). vol. 68, No. 3. The effect of teacher enthusiasm on
student intrinsic motivation and vitality: The journal of experimental education,
4. Wikipedia, 2017. Teacher, [online] Available at:
<https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teacher> [Access 28 April].

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 The University of Goroka

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