TEACHING – A VALUABLE PROFESSION

For any program or person to be successful in reaching their goals they need a little – or perhaps more than a little – help from above. This fact can be seen very clearly in many aspects of life – the nurturing parent, the successful child, the caring doctor, the healthy patient, the fine teacher, the achieving student, the strict manager.

• Would Franklin Roosevelt be the successful adult without his mother?

• Helen Keller without her teacher ?

• A sports team without its coach?

When the team doesn’t do well, often it’s the coach or captain who’s blamed or fired; on the psychiatrist’s couch it’s often the parent who’s blamed; and in the hospital, when the patient worsens ( check the medical insurance rates ), the doctor is blamed. When a new project in a factory fails , the manager/team leader is blamed rather than the team. It’s not easy being the leader, but it does bring rewards and gives one a fabulous feeling of power and achievement, responsibility, and control – especially, of course, when things improve and when goals are reached.

The school principal is the major, identified leader in school. Holding ultimate responsibility for the success of all programs, yet unlike the business CEO to which he/she is often compared, a principal does not hold control over all the variables that make up the business.

The story is told of teachers and principals in a district attending a motivational meeting, in which a successful entrepreneur told how, by diligence and hard work, he turned a rundown bakery business into a Million INR turnover Banana Cake business. Finally, a rather experienced teacher raised her hand and asked, “What do you do when you’re delivered a Bruised and Spoiled crate of Bananas?,” and the entrepreneur stated, “We send them back. We want only the best for our customers, and that’s what’s made us so successful.” “Well,” said the teacher, “we don’t do that. We accept all the ‘Bananas’ we receive and even the over- riped, spoiled and broken, and we try to make them into the very best so that they, too, can have a chance to be successful.”