The Changing Face of Teaching

Gauri Chhabra
Guru Govind donukhade, kaakelaagoonpaye
Balihari guru aapke, jinh Govinddiyomilaye
These immortal verses by Kabir bring before us the divine and celestial presence of the Guru or the teacher who is immortalized and equated with God. Aeons later, the teacher still holds a high pedestal, but has come a long way.
Teacher and teaching changed face along with the tectonic shifts in the society. It evolved from the Guru period to the time the teacher was responsible for transferring information to passive learners to the modern era wherein the teacher meets the ‘kids where they are’ . There has been as paradigm in teaching and the knowledge is actively constructed, discovered, transformed, and extended by students. This also created several career offshoots to teachers. This Teachers’ Day, let us rediscover all careers and the new emerging for options for all those who feel that they have the teaching instinct in them.
CORPORATE TRAINER
When teaching steps out of the classroom and enters the corporate room, it becomes Corporate Training. Today, companies have a separate Learning and Development arm that takes care of the career growth and skill enhancement of the employees both from a tactical standpoint and a s strategic perspective. It can also involve information on how to deliver a sales pitch, interact with customers and the inner workings of the company.It can also be based on a new method or technology being introduced into the company or simply a supportive technique or policy update to make the workplace run more smoothly.As a corporate trainer, you may be involved in Needs Analysis, Planning, Scheduling, Training and following up with training of professionals.
Qualification
A certified corporate trainer is a human resources specialist and college graduate with a degree in human resources, such as the Bachelor of Arts in Human Resource Management or an MBA with specialization in Human Resource Development. You can also take up a degree in Liberal Arts with majors in human resources and also study business administration, behavioral sciences, principles of management, organizational structure and industrial psychology.
As corporate trainers often teach new software, computer courses and information systems courses are also highly recommended. Certified corporate trainers can also take English courses to improve their writing skills or a foreign language course to enable conversation with the diverse workplace population.
Career Graph
The average salary for a corporate trainer is Rs 3-6 lacs per year. Experience strongly influences income for this job.Aspiring corporate trainers with a broad liberal arts background can learn how to develop curriculum, teach skills to individuals and groups and evaluate the training results.
ONLINE INSTRUCTOR
With geographically diversities and cultures spread across the globe, companies and students are gravitating towards distance education and online courses. This calls for the need for online tutors.Online tutors teach a variety of subjects, including Math, Science, and English, as well as test preparations for CAT, PSAT, SAT, GRE, GMAT etc for students from around the world who range in age from elementary school to college.
Qualification
While less formal arrangements may require only demonstrated experience in the subject area, teaching as part of a formal curriculum will likely require a bachelor’s degree, master’s degree, a Ph.D., or a B.Ed.Common coursework in a bachelor’s program or 1- or 2-year, master’s program that will help you prepare for a career as an e-teacher includes e-learning for educators, technology and instruction, assessments for e-learning, pedagogy, theories of learning and psychology of education. You must be comfortable and up-to-date with technology and trends in education. Understanding how to communicate online and how to use internet-based tools in an education environment is critical to succeeding as an e-teacher.
Career Graph
As an online tutor.you will be paid per class which ranges from Rs 2000 – 5000 depending upon the level of the class and the subject taught. You can be a K -12 teacher, college instructor and can dovetail your normal teaching career into creating a virtual classroom. Besides, you can be involved in different fields like continuing education or in-service education of professionals, nonprofit organizations, business, government organizations, or academic healthcare education. In case you are working for a company, you can also develop expertise with its Learning Management System, and own the deployment of online learning content.Later, you can graduate to the position of Curriculum consultant, professional development coordinator, and distance education leader.
THE INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN SPECIALIST/ CURRICULUM DESIGNER:
As an Instructional Design Specialist, you would be responsible for the design, development and implementation of instructional materials that achieve learning and performance improvement objectives. You will develop educational programs and instructional materials for schools, organizations and companies. You can also assist the teachers, principals or other customers in the implementation of the curriculum and assess how well it is working after a period of use. Curriculum designers often work year round, as opposed to teachers who may work only during the school year.
Qualification:
Positions in curriculum design often require specialized education and a dash of experience. Teaching is often a jumping-off point for prospective curriculum designers, so you can begin with bachelor’s degrees or master’s degreesin Instructional Design, or related subject.
However, teaching experience may be most relevant for individuals wanting to work in K-12 education.
Positions at private companies that provide curriculum materials for specialized areas may value extensive subject matter knowledge, technology skills and technical writing skills more than teaching experience. More specifically, curriculum designers generally manage the curriculum review process, evaluating how well an organization’s curriculum aligns with program outcomes, learning methods, and assessments. More often than not, curriculum designers specialize in a specific subject matter.
Career Graph
The salary you draw may depend on whether you are working for schools and School Boards or in the corporate sector. You may also go on to develop curriculum for colleges and universities. If you are in the corporate sector, you may graduate from developing interesting and effective corporate training programs to supervising the individuals who maintain and distribute these essential learning materials.In order to make the curriculum design process work smoothly, curriculum designers often meet with educational decision-makers, committees, and advisory groups to determine the specialized needs of a certain group of individuals and recommending the types of learning materials to be purchased.
COUNSELOR
Counselors help people make the most of their lives in the face of unique challenges and adversity. They develop relationships with their clients, often in a very personal way, and recommend problem-solving approaches and relationship-building techniques. Counseling is a dynamic profession that offers the rare opportunity to do work of profound significance on a daily basis. You can specialize in a variety of subjects: marriage and family, addictions, school guidance, mental health, community health and nutrition, or career. Besides, you may also specialize in rehabilitation, physical and mental disabilities, or crisis counseling with people in times of serious need or injury.
Education requirement
Most counselors have a bachelor’s or master’s degree, but you can also start with certificate in guidance and counseling. After gaining a certificate you need toobtain a bachelor’s degree or even a master’s degree for marriage and family counseling, personal growth counseling, psychotherapy, some types of addiction counseling or crisis counseling needs to Other counseling careers, such as psychoanalysis and some social work, require a PhD or other doctorate degree.
Career Graph
It has been projected that jobs for education, vocational and school counselors are projected to rise by 14% by 2018. You can start as a counselors work in elementary, middle and high schools. Experience would give you directorial or supervisory roles for counseling personnel services, become counseling educators and school administrators or rehabilitation centers.
Summing up
So, if you have the teaching acumen in you, you can be the Guru who is all perceiving and builds a corridor between classroom to the corporate room and beyond…then you will bring about a resonance of Kabir’s couplet- Guru Gobinddonukhade…