I am a professional. I do not earn hourly wages or punch a time clock. I am a salaried professional who works as long as needed to get the work done. My salary should reflect the importance of my profession in society.
I alone determine what, how and when to teach the components of my discipline within a range of recognized professional practices. I consult with my professional colleagues, but in the end I determine my teaching practices. I do not yield that curricular duty to textbook publishers or external agencies. While discipline knowledge may be universal, students are not uniform in experience background nor ability.
I teach both my discipline and my students. Students come into my course as unique students. They should graduate from my course as unique students.
I know my discipline thoroughly because a teacher cannot teach what a teacher does not know. And I know my discipline at least one level deeper than what I teach because I must get the lesson correct and be able to carry advanced students further. I have a broad liberal arts education because I am preparing students for a full life, not just for a job.
I have a unique set of communication skills that fit with a particular range of students. Other teaching colleagues have unique sets of skills as well that may often be different. By interacting with a variety of teaching personalities, students learn to interact with the variety of people they will encounter in life. The duty of school administration and staff is to provide teachers and students with the support and resources we need. Just as doctors are the core professionals of a hospital, teachers are the core professionals of a school. And just as the best of doctors lose patients, the best of teachers lose students. This does not mean that doctors want patients to die or teachers want students to fail, but that despite our best efforts there are many factors beyond our control involved in the medical and teaching arts.
Teaching is an art. And artists vary in how they practice. A teacher who inspires one student may not inspire another. As a teacher I am a role model for honesty, work and study ethic, and dignity. Within the context of my discipline, I work with my students to reinforce honesty. To encourage hard work and study. To promote personal dignity. To practice students in tolerance and respect for others who differ in language, race, religion, physical features, gender, intelligence and values. To require respectful behavior so they will in turn deserve respect. To help students grow to become young ladies and young gentlemen.
I have a responsibility to be excited about my discipline, but each student is responsible for his or her intrinsic motivation. I will evaluate each student’s intellectual growth with fairness and I will not characterize a student by any single examination. I alone will develop or select the evaluations to be used in my coursework. My teaching will be driven by my students’ needs, not by any external impersonal criteria. I will work to know each student personally, knowing the totality of a student’s abilities is beyond simple measures and s an examination is not an education. I will continually update my knowledge in my discipline and in education in order to improve my effectiveness as a teacher. I alone will select my professional development. My school will fully support my professional decisions in self-improvement.
Any country with a future will fully support the teaching profession because all other professions depend upon teachers to educate their future professionals. For without professional teachers, a country has no future.
By Sherwin Dusagan
