By Hu Wo (Cuckoo’s Song)
HONESTLY speaking, I have scraped a living from part-time tutoring for over a decade. I have also taught almost all school subjects to students of basic education as a part-time teacher. Now and then, a challenging question is arising in the world of education: is it possible or not for a teacher to instruct all school subjects by himself? Apparently, most people from the educational field cannot accept that only one teacher will be able to do every school subject all by himself. As we all probably know, the three educational subjects – Educational Theory, Educational Psychology, and Methodology – must be studied in our country’s universities of education as major subjects by future teachers and so must just any three academic subjects in accordance with their respective subject volumes that were learnt for the matriculation examination, for example, ELT, Physics, and Biology, as special subjects. Of course, whatever kind of teacher anyone is, there may be possible reasons for a teacher instructing all school subjects, maybe including the inadequate number of teachers, no teachers under necessary and desired instructions to subjects, and teachers’ very potential wish to be a mine of information or an all-rounder on each school subject. Surely enough, an all-subject teacher will face a variety of difficulties, challenges, strengths and weaknesses throughout his whole teaching process, more or less.
A teacher of all school subjects will have to study all the subject matter from them for certain. Here, he could have managed to learn all the textbooks by heart, involving how to solve mathematical problems, after a few years of teaching experience. Nevertheless, it is truly difficult to say that a teacher alone will be able to know each and every school subject inside out. For instance, even an English teacher cannot master all four language skills professionally or personally for sure. In my experience, a teacher who has got a great command of language writing is usually found not as fluent in speaking as most have expected. Despite the fact that the teacher has the fluency and accuracy of all linguistic skills, his proficiency in a language tends to lie merely at an approximately equalized level of language achievement in all skills, and he rarely excels at those skills to such an extent that he is likely to be an authority on language. Also, in the sections of writing, the majority of authors are proficient only in a genre of written forms, viz. poetry, prose, and drama. Mathematically speaking from the point of view of academic qualifications, it is probable that the learning depth of subject knowledge will be inversely proportional to its study breadth. What I mean is that a teacher who is studying and teaching all school subjects is often capable to get generalized meanings as regards these school subjects, but probably not their specific meanings, that is, theoretical concepts or down-toearth approaches to all. In other words, it is virtually impossible for an all-subject teacher to hold a grasp of a deep teaching process.
There is the most distinctive role in a teacher’s art of instruction. This is nothing but his teaching style. As always, any teaching style consists of teaching methods and lesson plans as and when necessary. Before the teaching process, a teacher had better think about the subject nature, teaching techniques appropriate to the subject, and instructional materials as best he can. In the main, subjects are categorized as art subjects like English or Myanmar, and science subjects such as Physics or Mathematics. As far as I am aware, traditional teaching methods might be suitable for art subjects seeing that these subjects are founded on ideas, opinions, or thoughts and commonly call for so much book reading only; however, science subjects will certainly require modern teaching methods in that those subjects are primarily based on practicals and need a large number of tests or experiments in particular. Whether in art or science subjects, teaching aids would cost more and more to his heart’s content. And an all-subject teacher, as usual, is busy drawing effective and efficient lesson plans. Without lesson plans, teaching is liable to look blind. But perhaps it is all right for a teacher to make lesson plans for every subject. An English teacher may do well in instructing Myanmar simply because these two subjects are related languages. So may a Maths teacher lecturing Physics since Mathematics is the language of Physics, as the saying goes. Nonetheless, art subjects and science subjects are definitely worlds apart in terms of their subject nature itself. It is scarcely surprising that a teacher is an expert on both art and science subjects, too.
Typically, deep learning necessitates memorization, conceptualization, practice, and repetition. Since learning and teaching often go together, time plays a tremendous part in performing those necessaries. Not only learning but also teaching takes so much time that these processes will have to be carried out effectively and efficiently, whereas for a teacher of all-grade subjects, teaching all school subjects on the same day, or teaching a single subject throughout the whole day, or teaching more than the time allowed when students can turn the other cheek, in which child attention period is frequently no more than 15 minutes, or teaching two different subjects during the same time is out of the question by any means. Those teaching modes may drive students bored, lazy or even aggressive towards teachers. Besides, experienced teachers like to spend adequate time giving students homework, projects, or term papers, and checking their exercises, sometimes with written tests, oral tests or practical tests as summative assessments. Enough practice and frequent repetition should contribute to the very learning, actually. Clearly, I expect that many teachers of allgrade subjects will have difficulty finding time for students’ repetition and practice when absolutely necessary for the simple reason that they cannot do teaching over the maximum time of eight hours a day for love or money.
Teachers always ought to take good care of their competency skills whether they are getting higher or lower. Naturally, teacher competency skills comprise re-teaching previous lessons to students, additional teaching of external knowledge apart from textbooks, joining co-curricular or extra-curricular activities, attending courses, workshops, or seminars, going for excursions, and extended reading. Without these mentioned tasks, the teacher’s competency skills are constantly declining consciously or unconsciously. Even worse, a teacher believes in himself under the illusion that his teaching meth ods have been wholly satisfactory, flawless, and enough for himself and his students, not noticing the fact that nothing is perfect. On the whole, time is the life of the above-mentioned tasks. If an all-grade-subject teacher cannot manage his own business on time or in time, he will necessarily face work overload and backlogs in his preparation for lessons and students’ exercises before, while or after teaching as well as all his efforts on teaching may end up in failure among the colourful worlds of teaching sooner or later. Lower teacher competency skills lead to poor student achievement results in school lessons quite regularly. Moreover, most teachers feel able to find out their private personalities, mentalities, enjoyment, happiness, and job satisfaction only from a few of their favourite teaching subjects.
Speaking as my handy tips for teachers-to-be, it is best if they teach the one subject that they really concentrate on learning for their professional development, or that they will always be very patient with teaching, or that they can have a passion for sharing with students, taking up sufficient time for subject-related study as they like. Next, the teacher will be able to impart enough study and quality education to students on condition that he must have been more knowledgeable about his responsible curriculums than them.
The pros and cons of all-subject teaching notwithstanding, a teacher should have had general knowledge about anything regarding education such as entrance examinations and scholarship opportunities, words of humour or anecdotes included. A teacher’s sense of humour, sweet talk, good voice, and eloquence may be the key points to the effectiveness of all his instruction, particularly language teaching. Most importantly, a teacher to the core can manage a learned subject into an applied one in real-life situations. Finally, it is strongly advised that inexperienced little teachers refrain from teaching every school subject if at all possible. If and when the teachers must do so, all the subjects in their charge should have been well prepared systematically before the class. And again, care has to be taken that some students themselves are not interested in some subjects at all, especially mathematics. A teacher of all subjects would have done all the subject matter in curriculums for an academic year, but ten-to-one students’ authentic achievement in the subjects will provide plenty of food for thought, I should think.
