LEARNING SOME SKILLS FOR BECOMING BETTER TEACHER

India is a very vast country with great variations from culture , language , geography , life and education. Similar variations are also visible in its educational system. While some provinces follow regional languages and dialects for teaching in schools , some follow English and even French for the same purpose. Similarly there is a variation cyber literacy and personality patterns. However with changing times the education system of various provinces is also changing rapidly. With this melting pot of different cultures as per the demand of modern technology , globalization , westernization, etc. we find a typical mosaic of both bullock cart age and the electronic cottage. However when it comes to some professional demands like job seeking especially in education sector that too in private sector ( which covers the maximum clientele in the form of learners ) there is a very high demand for candidates with English proficiency besides the usual required qualifications.

In the field of preparation of teachers there exist basically two types of institutions : government run and private run institutes. Both these types of institutes on the other hand have by and large two types of learners : One learning through regional languages while the others learning through English medium. The sad fact , however is that in the job market there is an ever increasing demand for English medium trained teachers. In the job market besides good proficiency there is a demand for two more factors : Computer literacy and personality and communication skills.

The Department of Education , University of Lucknow conducted an experiment for more than eight years in this regard. The to be teachers were specially trained in these three skills namely English speaking, Computer literacy and Personality and Communication besides their regular syllabus . A special provision in the time table besides the competent teachers to impart these skills was made after a careful discussion session by the staff. Since in India the tenure for secondary teacher preparation is one academic session , eight batches of such trained teachers came in the job market – one batch per year.

It has been clearly established through various means such as feedback proforma , job placement records, discussion sessions with the learners, etc. that the to-be teachers who were imparted these skills turned out to be better and easier placed in the job market beside a considerable positive outlook in their vision and attitude.