by lisa kay

Created on: March 24, 2009   Last Updated: March 27, 2009

The Teaching Profession is Changing with the Recession

The teaching profession is now accepting adults who have had varied life experiences. It is currently not necessary in some states to have education courses. This brings a wonderful dynamic to our children who desperately need folks to teach them how to think out of the box.There has been an informal acceptance for teachers to focus on the average kid.

My question to them is how did they focus?Did they teach them life skills or just materials from the books? Did they use appropriate role models as examples and perhaps bring them into the class. Certainly sports figures who have been proven to use their fame to help youngsters would be a good example.

The teachers of today are chemists,accountants,nurses,gardeners,chefs. These professionals can easily fit into any classroom curriculum such as math, hygiene, botany, home economics and actors. The tips I would give to these people is to show where their life experiences relate to the curriculum of their particular school. Their life experiences could teach the children ethics,social behavior and how to stand up for their values. Of course we would hope that the children would have values to begin with. If not it would seem necessary to begin to teach an ethics course depending on the ages of the children. Actually some type of values courses could be started as early as first grade.. The way it could be done is to do some primary role playing, where children could take roles of people with good behavior and bad behavior then the difference could be addressed. In this way children could actually experience the feelings that the subject under discussion could exhibit.

Some reference books on role playing would be Alfred Morenos book on psychodrama,Isabel Bergers book on Creative dramatics.These books would serve as an invaluable guide to thinking out of the box. Music could be added to a little skit and if it is well received the rest of the school could be invited to see the little playlet. The teacher does not have to have any type of acting courses just an active imagination, empathy and willingness to try something new. Since the above mentioned professionals are already trying adventures in the classroom it would seem highly probable that they could work out something.

Some additional tips would be to describe themselves as having an active imagination,empathy and willingness to try new adventures with children. They could show in their resume the situations where the above attributes were used within their own lives such as creating trips for their own children or planning events for adults. Men and women can easily show how sports events have been planned professionally and how players react to life skills on the fields. The attributes that children can learn through the example of sports is courage, willingness to participate as a group,modeling behavior of other sports figures,fairness and acceptance of rules of the game.

There is so much instant knowledge in our society with all of the technology of today that a more relaxed way to teach children can be utilized.It can be a more humane way as well. The individual style can be very personal. Spiritual, emotional and intellectual values can be focused on and addressed. All it takes is a little bit of research,willingness to change and challenges to be learned by the adult who wishes to enter the teaching profession.

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