teacher roles

A traditional view of the teacher is of someone who dispenses knowledge: someone who Lectures, tells, feeds, disseminates, covers material, teaches the subject matter more than the students. The students sit passively while the teacher is on show. Desks in rows and a blackboard and podium up front are an arrangement designed for this role of a teacher. However, lectures are effective for giving short sets of instructions, background information, guidelines, or other information that is needed in a short time frame (e.g., before doing a class project, lab, or group activity).

Demonstrations, on the other hand, allow students to experience more fully the information and concepts the teacher wants to impart during the lesson. Although the teacher is still the center of the action and the dispenser of knowledge, students can more easily see what they need to know and more efficiently link it to prior knowledge in their own ways. Students remember much better what they have both heard and seen (or even touched, smelled, or tasted)!

Listening is a very important teacher role, something that we don't usually think of in connection with the lecturer role, however. Listening is crucial for assessment of learning (checking comprehension and appropriate challenge level), for collaboration between teachers and students (coaching instead of just judging), and for giving students a real sense of ownership of classroom activities as well as for allowing students to articulate and internalize the learning processes. Teachers who listen can turn around and provide very effective support structures to guide students on to the next level of challenge.

Empowering is really what teaching is all about. Ironically, though, many teachers act as if empowering students means weakening themselves--their authority as both a classroom disciplinarian and a subject-matter authority. But maybe power is like love: the more you give, the more you get.

p/s .. Obviously, teachers wear many hats: friend, counselor, judge, mentor--hundreds of roles and different roles for different classes, students, and extra curricular duties