Teacher in a Classroom as a Conductor in an Orchestra

Although teachers might not want to be the central focus of the class, they should be ready to overtake two or more roles to help bring about well-established balanced classes. Nowadays, most of the successful ESL classes are becoming less concerned about the teacher’s talking time inside the class as much as the students’. However, a teacher remains the students’ role model and a person whom they always look up to. Accordingly, it is of pivotal significance that teachers get to know the various roles that they may or may not play during a class. To clarify, managing, organizing, promoting and assessing are four of the most important roles a teacher would wish to play.

This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Azza S. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT.

Managing Routines and Activities

First of all, teachers can find themselves managers inside the class, controlling almost every minute of it. Some teachers encounter comfortableness and self-confidence when they play the role of managers since they feel that the students, that way, are ready to be inspired by them. Nonetheless, most ESL classes nowadays do not identify with so-called managers; however, any teacher should be aware of when and how to keep the class under his or her control. Secondly, teachers are susceptible to playing the role of an organizer. To exemplify, a teacher who would like to play a certain game with the students should know how to divide the students into teams or pairs, how to organize their seats as per the activities and how to give clear instructions to come up with the well-organized output. A teacher playing the role of an organizer has to build rapport with the students to help result in good organization and, hence, valid classes. In short, teachers’ playing the roles of managers and organizers can be vital for producing a healthy teaching-learning process.

Also Read: What is the difference between TESOL and TEFL?

Providing Encouragement and Assessment

Not only can teachers find themselves managers and organizers, but they can also act like prompters and assessors. To begin with, teachers might want to give their students a push, to start an exercise or activity, for instance, that takes the shape of modeling the first question of the exercise or triggering a specific conversation to get the students talking and producing. In this case, teachers play the role of prompters; however, teachers might tend to be aware of not spoon-feeding the students or helping them a bit too much, unnecessarily. Finally, one of the most significant functions a teacher can be identified with is assessing his or her students. Acting as assessors, teachers should notice their students’ performances and put them on the right track whenever possible. This role would require the teacher to be regularly giving feedback; therefore, teachers should be sensitive during such a process to avoid embarrassing a student or overpraising another and, thus, shun any unnecessary disturbance in the students’ learning processes. In brief, prompting and assessing are two of the important roles of teachers.

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In conclusion, the roles of teachers are many such as managing, organizing, promoting and assessing. Also, teachers can act as participants whenever needed as well as resources to the students who value their positions as their teachers. However, teachers might need to switch between the roles to produce successful activities and classes. Teachers also need to know how exactly to carry on a specific role to avoid any exaggerated attitude. To cut long story short, knowing when and how to use which role is a good teacher’s guideline.

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