A teacher or schoolteacher is a person who provides education for pupils (children) and students (adults). The role of teacher is often formal and ongoing, carried out at a school or other place of formal education. In many countries, a person who wishes to become a teacher must first obtain specified professional qualifications or credentials from a university or college. These professional qualifications may include the study of pedagogy, the science of teaching. Teachers, like other professionals, may have to continue their education after they qualify, a process known as continuing professional development. Teachers may use a lesson plan to facilitate student learning, providing a course of study which is called the curriculum.
A teacher's role may vary among cultures. Teachers may provide instruction in literacy and numeracy, craftsmanship or vocational training, the arts, religion, civics, community roles, or life skills.
A teacher who facilitates education for an individual may also be described as a personal tutor, or, largely historically, a governess.
In some countries, formal education can take place through home schooling. Informal learning may be assisted by a teacher occupying a transient or ongoing role, such as a family member, or by anyone with knowledge or skills in the wider community setting.
Religious and spiritual teachers, such as gurus, mullahs, rabbis, pastors/youth pastors and lamas, may teach religious texts such as the Quran, Torah or Bible.
Read more about Teacher: Professional Educators, Pedagogy and Teaching, Rights To Enforce School Discipline, Obligation To Honor Students Rights, Teacher Enthusiasm, Misconduct, Teaching Around The World, Spiritual Teacher, Popular Educators
Famous quotes containing the word teacher:
“Quintilian [educational writer in Rome about A.D. 100] hoped that teachers would be sensitive to individual differences of temperament and ability. . . . Beating, he thought, was usually unnecessary. A teacher who had made the effort to understand his pupil’s individual needs and character could probably dispense with it: “I will content myself with saying that children are helpless and easily victimized, and that therefore no one should be given unlimited power over them.””
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“The teacher must derive not only the capacity, but the desire, to observe natural phenomena. In our system, she must become a passive, much more than an active, influence, and her passivity shall be composed of anxious scientific curiosity and of absolute respect for the phenomenon which she wishes to observe. The teacher must understand and feel her position of observer: the activity must lie in the phenomenon.”
—Maria Montessori (1870–1952)
“Every marriage tends to consist of an aristocrat and a peasant. Of a teacher and a learner.”
—John Updike (b. 1932)