The Intricate Art of Teaching

Teaching is arguably one of the most, if not the most, difficult professions in the world. In fact, calling it a profession itself is a disgrace to it. It is a service, and much like the army, it can be a severely underpaid service. Despite that, teachers pour in all their efforts to better the life of every student that comes to them, without any discrimination. The difficulty starts with the teaching itself. To teach a concept, especially past 6th grade, the teacher must not only be well-versed in the topic, but also have a lot of background information about and beyond the topic as their ‘syllabus’ is not defined; there is no limitation to what a student might ask. Another end of the spectrum is the guy that does not have the capacity of other brighter students. You have to make him/her understand too. While this seems like a problem that does go away with time, every batch of students are different people with different capabilities. Even if that problem goes away, another problem arises: to make the class interesting. Attention span is decreasing every day, and it is worryingly low for students, so how do you make them pay attention to your class for 45-60 minutes? The moment they switch off, the learning goes away, scores fall, and it’s just more pressure on the teacher. They have to now research the latest trends, news, etc and spend painstakingly long amounts of time trying to connect it with their syllabus to present it to the students. If this is not enough trouble, teachers also spend time and energy instilling discipline, emotional intelligence, social awareness, resilience and so much more to each and every student. All they want is that student to succeed. They don’t do this expecting an award or a prize money; how many teachers actually receive incentives for making all their students pass their exams?

If Education is the most powerful weapon in one’s possession, why do we not call teachers the greatest scientists of mankind?

A professional climber climbs the Everest once in a lifetime; a teacher climbs one every day.