The Range of Teacher Roles

The Range of Teacher Roles

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2. The Range of Teacher Roles

Here is another very important area that is seldom studied in other TEFL courses.

2.1 There’s More to The Teacher Role than You Might Think

You’ve already studied what it takes to be a competent and effective teacher – and you will be if you take all our ideas on board and marry them with your own ideas. However, our focus in the previous session was mainly on KASH – the knowledge, ability, skills and habits you require to deliver up a successful lesson.

However, unknown to many new teachers, there’s lots of other things you need to do to ensure success. It would be pleasant if the teacher’s role focused simply on passing on information, creating an enjoyable atmosphere and other pleasant activities. However, it’s not as easy as that.

There are other personal and supervisor type roles and activities you will be responsible for and these require skill and energy. They come with the job, as they say. We’ve listed these in the next section.

2.2 The Range of Teacher Roles

So, here is a list of the additional roles and activities you’ll be involved in and responsible for.

You may have picked up the skills necessary for these roles already in another job or activity, so that experience will serve you well.

If not, you should consider delving into these areas before you take up your teaching post. Our course will help you with some of these personal and supervisor type skills in some areas, e.g. assessment, motivation, planning and you’ll likely have friends who use other skills in their job and can help you. A good book on general supervisor or management skills will also be of benefit, as will the Internet.

The majority of inexperienced TEFL teachers setting out for their first teaching post have given no thought to this. Perhaps their course did not make them aware of this. It’s then a severe shock to their system when they realise they’re unprepared in some of these skills areas. It’s critical that you do some research into some of these skills areas if you feel you haven’t had experience of some of them before.

The key thing is that we have now made you aware of this and you know what you have to do!

Typical roles you will be involved in:

Assessor: assessing progress, correcting errors, diagnosing what needs to be done in follow-up lessons

Controller: ensuring that, at particular times, the whole class is tuned into what needs to be done, e.g. starting off a new activity, and ensuring that classroom order is maintained

Facilitator: