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I believe there is no other role more interesting as a teacher. When we think of teachers, we often think of teachers at schools, but in a larger context, teachers literally mean a person who teaches. Although there is a formal occupation that has the title, ‘teacher’, technically anybody can be called a teacher if they decide to teach wisdom and knowledge to another person. I believe this is important to always have in one’s heart because being a teacher isn’t just an occupation, but a way of life. It’s not just a role that one may carry at a specific location like at schools, but it is an act and performance on one’s daily basis. I think this is important because teachers may have one of the more challenging occupation boundaries. As a teacher, you are responsible for sometimes one, sometimes 20-40, and sometimes more students. Although there has always been a controversial discussion about teachers’ boundaries in discipline and moral values, I believe it is difficult to avoid these topics while you, as a teacher, may be interacting with the students more than their families. I’m not saying that teachers should indoctrinate the students according to the teachers’ beliefs, but I believe a teacher isn’t simply present to teach what is inside the textbook. Teachers should have a strong sense of their goals, belief, hope, and message to the students that they are interacting with. If people are only expecting pure knowledge from their education, they can do it on their own while reading a textbook. But, interestingly, many people desire to have a teacher while learning something. The teachers’ role is different in every situation. Through this course, in Unit 19, I learned about different classes, like young students and adult students learning English for business. What is expected and wanted from the teacher is very different in the stated situations. In the young student class, the teacher might have to intervene in students’ life and discipline, but it is inappropriate to do so to an adult. On the contrary, adults usually want a more knowledge-based interaction, where the relationship between the teacher and the students are more separated and professional. At a cram school, teachers are for one single purpose, to raise the students’ grades so that they are able to get into their desired high school or a college. But in the case of an elementary school, or at least for the school that I will be working for, I believe teachers should provide wisdom as well as knowledge. It is indeed important to teach necessity knowledge, but I also strongly believe teachers are educating the students to become a responsible person. Responsible is a vague word, but as long as we live in a community, I would argue that it is more important to become a decent and fine person who is able to contribute to their community than to become a decent and fine scholar. As a teacher, we are in a position, where we can influence both the person and the scholar. Every teacher has different goals, teaching beliefs, and method, but mine is to enrich the brain and the heart. I will be in a formal teaching position, but I want to always remember that teaching can happen anywhere and can be done by anybody. As I positively influence the students, not just giving them knowledge, but also enriched experience, I am, too, excited to learn by my students, the young teachers.
