Who Will Be the Best Teachers?

Who Will Be the Best Teachers?

If "The Best Should Teach" is universal social wisdom, as I believe and have advocated throughout my career, who will be the best teachers is a question confronted by everyone: young people considering careers as well as members of all professions and citizens everwhere.

The best teachers will be men and women from all cultural, economic, racial, ethnic, religious and family backgrounds. Teaching potential flourishes abundantly in all segments of a multicultural society. It needs only to be discovered, motivated and developed by a society which agrees that THE BEST SHOULD TEACH.

For the Best Teachers, commitment is a priority dedication is essential, well-rounded scholarship and outstanding achievement in skill, content, and professional fields are indispensable. The best teachers are creative, have unlimited enthusiasm for learning and teaching. They interact easily--and wholesomely-- with all kinds of people and are especially sensitive to the multi-faceted backgrounds of learners. They have developed high leveln of communication skills and the ability to inspire and motivate the most reluctant minds. As professional leaders they infect others with positive social optimism and their own high moral and ethical values. In the United States the best teachers are models of democratic leadership: mutual respect and shared power are in evidence in their professional relationships.

Although some qualities essential for the best teachers-such as intelligence and certain personality traits-- are inherited, teachers are developed, rather than born. The best teachers are professionally prepared in skill and subject fields as well as in the knowledge about cultural backgrounds and learning tendencies of students. In addition, they have had the benefit of extensive supervised internships to prepare them to deal professionally with the complexities of human behavior and th cross-currents of cultural diversity. As professionals, the best teachers are always learning--about new content, new communication inventions, new knowledge about human behavior and our evolving multicultural society as well as new strategies for teaching.

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