What advice will you give someone who is aspiring to crack a job like yours?

"What advice will you give someone who is aspiring to crack a job like yours?" I came across this question somewhere on the internet last month. Since then I have been wanting to write on this, on my blog. Well, to start with, I don't have a glamorous job. I am a teacher and there are different opinions on and about this profession. I have heard people say that when one does not get any other job they become a teacher. Some say, it is the easiest job on earth. Some say, there is too much studying every day in this profession. Some say it's a very conventional branch for female candidates. Once my cousin brother told me that one must be really 'chatty' to excel at the job. I say, one must be knowledgeable and talk sense and deliver even more sensible things with practical examples to excel at the job. I did not obviously expect an 'engineer' to not give importance to experiential learning.  Also, teaching is not the only thing that teachers do as a part of their duty. We are obviously given a hell load of paper work. Belonging to the department that I am from, there is obviously a lot of work load with respect to magazine and other editorial stuff. If you crack a good school, you will have to have regular parent teacher meetings and by regular I mean every week. You should be prepared to take continuous classes from morning till afternoon and sacrifice your food and pee. Yes, you read that right. You will have to forget about your voice . You will have to get accustomed to having your tiffin within ten minutes and getting a headache by the time the school gets over. Hybrid classes after the pandemic had just added to the work load, I would say. Regular PPT(s) and assignments is a part of our daily routine. Making lesson plans is so essential. Go without preparing for a lesson one day and you will understand what a huge difference it makes in and to your class. Last but not the least, copy correction. Hundreds and hundreds of them every week. By hundreds, I mean hundreds. Imagine taking four sections and each section having around 40 students ( if not more) and each student having three separate notebooks for your subject. I am a language teacher and students maintain three different notebooks for my subject in each class. Timely correction in my school is something that is expected from the teachers. This is more or less the gist of what one is expected to do as a part of their duty as a teacher.                                                                                        Now obviously there are a few other things that one must take note of. Students have their opinions and own mindsets. They are in the most challenging zone of their lives. They are adolescents and they won't always be the best in their behaviour. Come on! I mean ask yourself, how were you as a teenager? They will have questions and the present generation may even baffle you with their questions and sometime comments. You need to know what to filter and what not to filter, what to pay attention to and what to ignore. Keeping that boundary won't always be easy but you need to tackle it diplomatically and it does not happen over night. It comes with habit and practise. Experience as they say. It does matter. 

                         Then why should one aspire to be a teacher? Because days when students or maybe one student suddenly comes to you for help or calls you out of the blues just to tell you how much they appreciate and love you, or seek for any advice, you feel grateful. Something inside you feels loved. When they bend down to touch your feet and wait for you to bless them, you feel worthy. There is respect in this job and no matter who you are dealing with, you get addressed as ' ma'am, and with respect most of the times. Why most? Not ever student or parent you meet will greet you with courtesy and there can be many reasons behind it. Also, if you get a chance to teach in a good school, your salary won't be less. There is a lot of learning in this profession and you will learn from your students every day. There is a lot of diversity and a lot of challenges see that one will only have when there are adolescents involved. That in turn makes the job very interesting. The profession is not about giving and taking. It's about giving and getting. Sudha Murty once said :

" It is true that school teachers, more than college teachers, build your fundamentals. It is easy to teach at graduate and post graduate levels, but difficult to do so at the school level. Teachers-good ones at least- must have an enormous amount of love for their students. Knowledge is not the only criterion to judge a teacher ". I whole heartedly second this statement.