Primary school teacher characteristics.

The role and character of a teacher is especially important when young learners are concerned. As stated in previous sections the teacher here is a role model for his students and children will listen to whatever he says. Thus he has to look, behave and act in appropriate way.

First of all teacher’s appearance and age. It is advised that the teacher of primary school should be in his or her 30s or 40s. It’s because children see the teacher as a balance of a tutor and a parent – someone they can refer to and ask for help whenever needed. The teacher should look and behave in an average and friendly way. Odd clothes and things like lip, eye or nose rings or tattoos are not advised, as the teacher, although being very nice and friendly towards his student, will still serve as a bad role model – encourage his pupils to bad or unwanted behavior.

Appearance comes in pairs with clothes which should be clean and neat but not very formal. In most cases formal clothes would make it difficult for the teacher to move around the classroom and among his pupils. Most teachers and especially young ones prefer to come to the classroom wearing informal clothes that they would use to go out to do shopping or go to the cinema. It is crucial when young learners are concerned for the reason that some kind of connection between the teacher and pupils is created. The children will not think of the teacher as someone odd, different from them or outstanding in some way.

The third important factor is teachers knowledge and experience. Young learners require some special skills from the teacher – like the ability to control large groups of children, arranging classroom activities in a way that they would both teach and entertain, loads of patience and self-control and first and foremost – the teacher of primary school should be friendly. Experience is also very important. Once the teacher has some it’ll be easier for him to maintain order in the classroom, keep the good atmosphere, entertain the children and teach in a way that his pupils would not get bored after 10 minutes or so. Teacher’s knowledge is crucial here too as a teacher who is not sure of what he’s teaching or a teacher who’s making mistakes will only contribute to bad habit formation and in a way hurt his pupils for the lifetime. We all know how hard it is to overcome bad habits later on, while they’re created by the teachers of primary schools who tend to simplify things or sometimes simply make perverse mistakes.

The other important factors are: motivation, fairness, organization and flexibility. All those should be maintained so as to make the lessons more pupil-friendly and easier to comprehend even for those who are not very acquainted with language learning. Unmotivated teachers will only demotivate their students. Unfair will contribute to arising conflicts and those who cannot organize their lessons well will only bring more confusion and boringness into pupils minds and attitude.

To sum up, when primary school learners are concerned the choice of a teacher should be extremely careful because it’s probably the first language teacher in pupils lives and what he teaches them will in a way ‘hunt’ them for their entire school carrier. So eloquent, sometimes strict and sometimes lenient and first and foremost always friendly and smiling person should be chosen for the role.

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Lower secondary teacher characteristics.

As stated in previous sections of this page Lower secondary students appear to be the most problematic and troublesome community that teachers deal with. In consequence teachers have to have some special ‘abilities’ that could enable them to work efficiently and teach even those who manifest the tendency to reject whatever they find ‘stupid’ or pointless.

First characteristic feature of such teacher in my opinion would be experience. In situations when the class seems to be rejecting whatever teacher says some tutors react in a very emotional way and thus reveal their weaknesses before the group. And those are mostly teachers with weak self-consciousness or without proper experience. Teachers who dealt with such situations in past would most likely deal with it now, perhaps not without some problems, but still in more efficient and controlled way than the inexperienced ones. In very rare cases extremely well build coolness or self-control is also very advisable, as LS teachers in most cases deal with problematic youngsters.

The second extremely important feature is a proper knowledge. It is inexcusable for a teacher to be corrected by students and unfortunately this happens very often these days. Teacher then lose their authority, are looked down on by their students and won’t be able to progress with the lesson anymore. This is also the situation in which handful of teachers would lose their temper and react in an inappropriate way.

Age is not so important when LS students are concerned, but of course the students would feel more comfortable when their teacher would be someone fairly young, someone to whom they could easily confess and entrust their problems. Someone who would understand some odd behaviors and correspond to students interests and hobbies.

Appearance is, on the other hand, extremely important. Teachers who come to the classroom wearing very formal clothes will only arise some sort of funny situation. The teacher should wear such clothes, as to correspond to students preferable clothing. Of course, won’t be there leather trousers or fancy hairstyle but still, it’s advisable to wear neutral clothes rather than too formal.

And finally motivation. The problem of unmotivated teachers will only affect students’ performance and need for gaining knowledge. Unmotivated and unwilling to cooperate teachers will probably let their pupils do whatever they want, thus lose control over the classroom. Those who admit before the class that they don’t want to teach but they have to are lost from the start, and this, unfortunately, is one of the most common cases nowadays, when teachers simply forget why they ever decided to do what they’re doing. The teacher should serve as a role model, and what role model comes of a teacher who is unwilling to do anything?

The other aspects like fairness, flexibility or organization are also quite important but they in most cases depend on a particular person. Summing up, the teacher who wants to teach in lower secondary classes should be patient, well-educated, motivated and flexible. In this way the students of this quite problematic age group would at least try to cooperate with him.

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Upper secondary teacher characteristics.

Upper secondary students are relatively easy to handle community, at least when compared to lower secondary ones, thus teacher’s role is reduced to the tutor solely. This is for the fact that US students are in most cases grown-ups and they can well manage without the teacher as a role model.

First and foremost feature that the teacher should have is a proper and very good knowledge. Students require a lot from the teacher so he should be both experienced and knowledgeable so as to meet the expectations. Inexcusable would be the situation in which the student knows more about given notion than the teacher.

Age does not play the role here. I doesn’t matter if the teacher is young or in his 50s or 60s, what matters is knowledge, experience and the way in which the teacher communicates with the students. Putting age aside, every US teacher should be flexible. Variety and vast number of topics that are covered during upper secondary learning hours requires the teacher to be both adjustable and knowledgeable enough so as to ensure the students feedback.

All this comes to teacher’s authority. If the factors stated above are met the teacher will have some authority and will be able to organize the lesson in a way he wants. The students will also respect his will and obey when needed. It’s crucial because one deals with mature people and not with children and everyone should have enough time to state his opinion and the right to do so.

When appearance is concerned it’s similar to primary school and lower secondary. The teacher should wear neat and modest clothes, not very formal and not very informal too. Upper secondary students put little attention to teacher’s clothes or appearance. They, however disregard any kind of plea towards their own clothes and appearance.

And finally fairness which is extremely important in upper secondary schools. The students often focus not only on self-improvement and own achievements but also those of their mates, so favoring one or two students who seem to be better than the others is wrong and should be omitted. The rest of the group becomes unmotivated and unwilling to work or in some cases dependable on those students who are teacher’s favorite ones. In some cases favored students may be condemned by the rest of the group which affects badly the process or learning.

In conclusion, the teacher of upper secondary education should be well-educated, flexible and have an authority. These features are most important and in a way depict the best teacher for this particular age group.