The Role Of The Teacher Essay

Introduction

The role of the teacher has been defined and redefined many times over the years, with one thing always remaining true; teachers need to be flexible and willing to change their way of thinking as the years go by. One of the biggest factors affecting the role of the teacher would be the time period in which the teaching is taking place. When Harriet Bishop was starting out in St. Paul in the late 1840s, teachers needed to be a moral compass for their students to follow and greater emphasis was placed on building a happy home outside of the classroom. However, in today’s schools, the emphasis is being placed on teachers being “content experts” (Mader, 2016, p. 4) and teaching students how to achieve a higher order of thinking. Another factor that affects the role of the teacher would be culture of the school environment. In Finland, according to Walker (2016), teachers are required to go through “five years of coursework,

Paul, Minnesota. She was born in Vermont, in 1818, and that was where most of her schooling took place; eventually ending up in New York at the Fort Edward Institute. After reading the memoirs of Harriet Newell and Ann Judson who were wives of missionaries, “the thrilling story of their lives awoke a missionary spirit in Harriet that never faltered” (Morton, 1947, p. 135). She then accepted a teaching position in St. Paul where she was given training on what was to be expected of her out west. According to Morton (1947) the emphasis was placed greatly on “punctuality, truth and honesty in the schoolroom, diet, how to avoid sectarian jealousy, how to deal with party politics, and how to meet petty gossip” (p. 134). While regular school subjects were included in the lessons, it was made clear that her greatest duty to those young children was to prepare them for life outside of the