Teaching: A Joy or A Challenge?

Teaching should have been the most fulfilling job but why is it that we seldom see teachers who find fulfillment in what they are doing?

Back in the Philippines, most of the teachers were actually regarded as penniless people who do not have time for themselves. Oftentimes, teachers go back home with loads of paperworks to finish -- that is aside from the regular preparations that one has to do for the lessons to be presented. However, it is very sad to say that these paperworks only add burden to the teachers for they are only required for filing purposes and not for the learning of the students which is supposed to be the most essential concern of every learning institution.

A very typical example is the lesson plan. Most of the educational institutions have been adding ambiguity in the preparation of lesson plans without giving emphasis on the lesson itself. Instead of giving the teacher a chance to develop the lesson so that learning among the students could be maximize, much focus have been given on adding redundant parts of the lesson plan that the preparation of the lesson plan would take much longer than the presentation of the lesson and in the end, the lesson plan is much better than the lesson.

If we believe that teaching should be focused on the enhancement of students' learning then we have to change the current system of education wherein too much emphasis is given on documentation as part of the supervision process than on teaching and learning. As we move towards the new era of the human revolution, we need to understand the changes that has been brought to us by the ever-changing landscape of the society. The present generation demands us to become more practical as we don't have to waste any single moment of our life and so of our career. After all, everybody would find fulfillment when the end has been justified and that is, the students have learned something.

In the end, all we need to understand is the joy that teaching could bring to every teacher and not the challenges which only try to build the endurance of the teachers. If we fail to address such problem, then we fail to communicate to our learners that school is not a chamber of torture which would only test how determined they are.