According to John Dewey (1916), the core of the teaching process is the arrangement of environments within which the students can interact and study how to learn. This is what we were taught during our B.Ed.
But during my round of interviews for selecting teachers as the principal of a renowned school in Thane, I found that the answers varied from a) They love to teach, b) They need the money, c) They have left their full-time jobs after having children and this part-time job suits them with nearly 76 paid holidays in a year.
Well, I’m sure everyone has their reasons, financial or otherwise, but, I would like to stress that to make money you don’t have to join a school. You can do so even as a pastime, or out of passion as a home tutor, or if you have some leisure time to spare. School, College teaching is a different ballgame altogether. It is a profession by choice and passion. It is very difficult to make every student enjoy learning in a class of 80. For that, the teacher has to go to the level of the students as each individual learns differently.
As a school teacher you become their parent, confidante, guide, counsellor in addition to being their educator. To become a teacher, you yourself should be an all-rounder not only to teach but in all co-curricular and extra-curricular activities, which we have to involve the children in to find out their innate talents and hone their instincts in that field along with studies.
There are many reasons but we can say that we don’t have passionate teachers today compared to the brief history of ‘Gurus’ we had. These days even the parents are more focused on their child’s scores rather than developing the students overall growth. The society is also not aware about the importance of a teacher for their children. And on a humour note; Who needs a teacher when you have Google?
Also, we can blame our macaulian model of schooling where teachers are low paid employees of school, unlikely to attract the best of talents. Marketing or marketed teaching doesn’t get recognition and perception about the teaching profession, and that is very few value “teaching’ as a profession and it is often “Starting as a teacher by fluke” ….

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