The learning part is on the student, anyway. You can only assist them while they do it. And that mostly means breaking down stuff into lessons, taking care of the learning environment, answering questions as they arise, keep students from cutting each others hair off, and keep them busy until their parents come home from work (although I agree the last part is a bit of a cynical take).
Not really sure that is a proven advantage. I have always been self-motivated and had teachers who just left me to get on with it and marked anything I handed in to them. You still have to send out the right signals to people who don't know you.
All too often students go under-appreciated in the classroom and it can lead to a poor learning environment. So I set out (with the help of my 4th grade class) to get the word out there: ALL STUDENTS ARE APPRECIATED!
How often do you remember your teacher appreciating you as a student?
Very interesting how you see the role of the teacher. I never thought of it that way, but it's so true. With "free" learning available anywhere, their jobs are more to do with mentoring and less with transferring knowledge.
A teacher's job, if they're doing it right, is not to provide continual feedback to 20+ kids, but to create a space which focuses them on learning a particular skill or achieving a particular goal. Kids learn best when working with other kids, usually by modeling one another and taking the best bits as they go. It's continual exploration with an expert on hand to help when they get stuck or see some basic skills training.
reply