Whenever the word “Teacher” is mentioned, most people think of a man or a woman who stands or sits in an oblong or square rooming front of a black-board surrounded by thirty-five to forty-five boys and girls, who uses verbal communication and a piece of white chaik in an effort to make these children grasp what he is talking and chalking about. Only very few persons, if any, will remember to include the numerous activities outside the classroom, “activities such as reading for the preparation of lesson material, correcting work, preparing manuscripts or scheme of work. It is even less likely that when they think of the word “teacher” they would be thinking of those other people who also made their contribution so that the teaching could take place as it actually did.
In the management process the teacher plays a key role; his acts are likened to that of leadership traits; his behavior, his attitudes and the expectations of people in the social setting – all these combine to mark him out of the crowd. What he does and how he behaves affect thousands of tomorrow’s leaders in all walks of life. The teacher so conceived is a problem -solving agent in the ladder of administrative process. Without him all the efforts f others in the hierarchy of roles would yield no fruits.
He is at the operational level in the administrative hierarchy, in a sense he fashions the final product and sharpen it’s form for it is the final product that stands in the gaze of members of the society;it is the consummation of public expectations. The Educational System, which is the organization can hardly capture public praise or condemnation without the teacher, who is the nearest person to the people.
These are aware of urgencies growing out of rapidly developing knowledge, not only about what is important to learn but also about how people seem to learn what they are taught, these goes to project that fundamental improvement of education involves more than wholesale utilization of technical gadgets or the development of national curriculum.
Sadly our time is a period that grumbles about soaring cost of education .At such a time when concern about education and it’s cost is general, when evidence of effectiveness of current programme is inadequate, when segments of the population, and when everything centred on the enterprise changes almost overnight. At such a time it is the question of who takes what decisions and who takes on more passing significance. It is with this dimension in view that the cruciality of the role of the teacher can be measured. In the past the teachers role has been that of a purveyor of knowledge and know-how as agent in “socializing” the deprived children who has been “democratized” by slummy habitat, as speech and language therapist for children rendered inarticulate in “monosyllabic homes” and generally as a man and woman who tries hard to civilize his School Community. The public too accepts the teacher as the conservator of national traditions and customs and as exemplar of acceptable moral values.
Today, more than ever before, the teacher may still have all the above as his role; but such a narrow view of his role is myopic and can hardly stand the test of change and challenge. “The job of the educator (the teacher) is not simply to build on existing wants but to present what is worth wanting in such a way that it creates new wants and stimulates new interests. There fore in conclusion the role of the teacher in the management process can be state as(I) To be sure of what he knows; (ii) To grasp thoroughly what he knows (iii) To explore from time to time the perimeters of the unknown (iv) To raise and broaden his pupils horizon to that fringe of the unknown in order to discover and lastly share what may be found there.
As E.B Castle aptly put it, ” we can see this kind of thing happening in the nursery school, the lessons in literature or science , where the teacher stands to be in touch with the rife ideas of his age.
Happy World Teachers Day.
Ayobo/IpajaTV.com 