It’s true that highly educated teachers and lecturers are well paid professionals, with ideal working hours, but becoming a teacher has rewards and duties that far exceed just the salary aspect of it. For example, being a teacher allows you to share your passion with others, playing an active role in inspiring others and influencing who and what they will become when they leave school. Teachers who actively encourage their students can genuinely change lives, and at the same time, change the future of education.
The majority of teachers and teaching assistants who go into the role of an educator in the UK usually do so because they genuinely like teaching and preparing the coming generation for a brighter future. It is for this reason that you should always keep in mind a few things about being an educator, to make both your entry and consequent career path as a teacher, a happy one.
Teaching Assistant Courses Can Put You in a Very Advantageous Position
High level teaching assistant courses, also known as HLTA courses, pave the way towards becoming a fulltime teacher, after completing your education. Check out the teaching assistance courses on findcourses.co.uk, which are perfect for students who aspire to become teachers in the future. Findcourses.co.uk has multiple programs listed, which will let you choose one of the teaching assistant courses that is more suited to your current level of education and experience.
Although the final goal is to become a teacher for most TAs, the advantages of getting paid while being a student, as well as gaining invaluable teaching experience which most educators gain only after they become a fulltime teacher, are quite big selling points!
Once you have completed your graduation and the required degrees in education, you will have a leg up on most new teachers, when the actual teaching part begins! It generally leads to better job satisfaction, higher chances of being promoted and most importantly, becoming a better educator.
Money Cannot be the Focus Here
If you want a job that pays more than the average salary of a teacher, then there are quite a few others to choose from. Depending on your natural abilities, intelligence and inclinations, there are certainly a lot of other careers that pay better, but teaching is more about the job itself than the money. Only if you can understand and agree to that statement should you choose education as your career path, or it may not be the best choice for you down the line.
What is the Focus Then?
The focus of an educator is to nurture students and help them understand the subject in its proper essence. It’s the job of the teacher to properly analyse the strengths and weaknesses of each student in their class, so that they can help them overcome the shortcomings as best as they possibly can. It doesn’t always work, but when it does, that in itself is a reward which teaching professionals thrive on.
The focus needs to be on the students, their wellbeing and their futures, because if money becomes the motivating factor for a teacher to do their job, then it would prove particularly difficult to shape the future of multiple students on a yearly basis, especially when some of them could be heading for much higher paid jobs!
How You Conduct Yourself Really Matters
Every individual has a personality, but when you become a teacher and that personality begins to affect impressionable minds, you will need to be aware of your actions in front of the students. Something as simple as a smoking habit can lead to students following in the same footsteps, especially if you are an influential educator to them. At times, students are affected by the teacher’s personality subconsciously, and they do not even realise it.
You also need to be aware of how your actions can affect different children. For example, being an extremely strict and aggressive teacher is thought of as an effective way to impart education in many Asian cultures, and while that can be effective in yielding results in the short run, it can also damage the psychological balance in some students who are more vulnerable than others.
On the other hand, Western education largely depends on understanding the needs of each student and teaching them in ways that would make sense to them. Fear can be a great motivator for a lot of things, but deep learning is not one of them. Deep learning is a long-term process which requires genuine interest, or the knowledge will remain incomplete. Fear, on the other hand, is a short-term motivator, which is ill-suited for developing fluid intelligence and a workable knowledge base.
Admiration Cannot be the Goal, But It Can be a Welcome Side-Effect
The aim is to impart education by figuring out what works, and providing guidance as best as possible. This may lead to some students liking the educator, but that is not what the educator originally aims to do. It’s a welcome by-product of good teaching habits though, since that makes it easier for the teacher to do the job required.
On the other hand, it is equally important for a teacher to not seek approval from the students, as that would be in direct conflict with the standards of a teacher–student relationship. The teacher is supposed to take actions that are going to benefit the students, but those actions are to be taken on the basis of the teacher’s own judgement and should not be based on how it will affect their perception of the particular educator. It’s easy to make the mistake of trying to be the teacher that the students want you to be, but the job requires you to be the teacher they need.
A Teacher Needs to be a Positive Force in a Student’s Life
We live in a time when being a positive force as a teacher is portrayed cynically in pop culture, which makes the job of the teacher so much more difficult, but it’s still not impossible. Young students look up to their parents and teachers while growing up and whether they admit it or not, they are viewed as role models as well.
Being a positive force doesn’t always work, and some students every now and then will go astray, but it’s the ones that do get affected by your positive energy that matter. Our impressionable years are extremely important in building our personalities for the future, so as a teacher, you have the power to prepare each child under you for a happier adulthood.
If you still think that being a teacher is the right career choice for you, then follow it with all your heart.
Start early on with a few teaching assistant courses while you are studying, and craft a career intelligently towards reaching that ultimate goal. Keeping the various salaries associated with each field of education is definitely recommended, so that you can set up your expectations accordingly.
Are you thinking of entering the field of education? Let us know how you are planning to get there.
