Teaching is a gratifying career that allows you to mentor, inspire, and develop the potential of children, guiding them into becoming responsible members of society. Teaching also gives you an opportunity to enjoy flexible work schedules, where you can continually develop your professional skills and increase your chances for better opportunities and remuneration.
However, this fulfilling, noble career has challenges that test your resilience, organizational, management, and teamwork abilities.
Understanding the challenges you may face as a teacher and learning the best ways to overcome and prevent them is the first step to having a successful teaching career.
In this article, we explore all the main challenges of becoming a teacher and share effective ways to overcome and prevent them to help you determine whether teaching is the right choice for you.
Reasons to Become a Teacher
Few careers can be as rewarding and fulfilling in making a tangible difference in the lives of the young generation like teaching.
Most teachers do not regret their decision to become a teacher. The common reason is that teachers find inspiration in educating, mentoring, and guiding children in shaping their futures.
Though it may not be the same for all educators, here are some reasons why you should consider becoming a teacher:
- Job security: Though some jobs may be replaced by digitalization and technological changes, the demand for well-trained, qualified teachers is here to stay. The demand for teachers varies by grade, institution, school district, and subject, providing a wide variety of teaching options to choose from. Once you decide to put in the learning hours and establish yourself as an educator, you are sure to acquire a teaching job that you can count on for years.
The mobility of teaching skills in the teaching profession allows you to move to areas where the demand for teachers is high. Also, you can transition from a teaching career to becoming an administrator, a counselor, or even a social worker.
- High-demand career: The demand for teachers continues to grow across the international space. Online educational programs are also growing globally every day, demanding trained, qualified, and certified teachers to occupy them.
Also, your teaching credential is transferable and allows you to teach in different states, overseas, and in different kinds of institutions. Some of the states experiencing teacher shortages include Washington, Nevada, New York, Illinois, Indiana, Hawaii, and Texas. The subject areas experiencing the highest demand include Mathematics, English as a second language, Science, Art and music, World languages, Early childhood, and Special education.
- Making a difference: Every minute spent with your learners is an opportunity to make a lasting impression on them. A teaching career allows you to make a difference with visible results. It gives you the satisfaction of seeing your learners discover new knowledge in a subject, grow passionate about it, and deepen their interest in learning it.
Also, being a teacher means modeling good habits for your learners. You instill virtues of positivity, respect for diversity, conflict resolution, and empathy, some of which stick with them and influence their viewpoints for years.
- Lifelong learning: Throughout your teaching career, you will have opportunities to expand your knowledge and improve your skills continually. You can enrol in professional development programs such as seminars and workshops to enhance your teaching practices.
In addition, curriculum instructional methods are continually being influenced by emerging technologies and the historical events that unfold in real-time. This means you will always be learning something new, always positively to impact your students’ educational journeys.
You can also pursue Alternative Teacher Certification and specialized training in Special education and English as a Second Language to broaden your career opportunities and gain a competitive advantage during the hiring process.
- Give back to the community: Through teaching, you continually give back to the community and positively contribute to society. You influence the minds of young innovators, policymakers, and leaders. As a teacher, you are also a creator of all the other professions through sharing your knowledge. This plays a key role in shaping society and future generations.
- Inspire the next generations: Learners look up to you for not only their educational enrichment but also their social well-being. As you interact with them, you inspire, guide, and instill in them virtues that allow for their successful incorporation into society. For inspiration, you can checkout educational blogs and websites to give you the different tips you may require as a teacher.
10 Challenges of Becoming a Teacher
In teaching, every day in your job is different, and there may be challenges that come with it.
You may be faced with the challenge of managing rowdy children, finding new teaching methods for inclusive education, or upgrading your skills to keep up with the continually evolving world of smart and digital learning.
Understanding the various possible challenges helps you prepare adequately to work with your learners and their parents, other teachers, and the administration.
Here are ten challenges of becoming a teacher:
1. Limited Funding
Inadequate funding is a major challenge in education, especially in public and independent schools. When schools experience budget cuts, the first adjustment measure is usually to reduce pupil to educator ratio, which has a direct impact on the quality of learning.
An increase in the number of learners in a class is likely to impact the quality of learning by diminishing the benefits of one-on-one teacher-learner interactions. Lack of direct interaction with the teacher has been shown to lower learner satisfaction and achievement.
Lack of funding also translates to reduced investment in learning materials. In an era of incorporating technology in our classrooms and embracing inclusive learning, a variety of teaching methods are required. School districts need to increasinvestment in teaching resources to enhance the learning processes.
To overcome the challenge of limited funding, you may engage your creativity and create lesson plans that engage the learners.
In addition, you can also use fundraising to source funds from the school community, organizations, and school alumni.
2. Endless Paperwork
The education system demands that teachers complete and keep a lot of paperwork. Paperwork may include performance appraisal documentation, parent meet-up reports, and learner progress reports. Documents like student progress reports are essential in identifying a learner’s challenging areas and effective intervention measures.
If not well-managed, paperwork can drown you in lots of workloads, killing your creativity and passion for teaching.
To avoid being overwhelmed, develop effective ways of managing your paperwork once you are hired. Also, try to submit reports and documents on time. You can ask an experienced colleague to guide you on effective data organization strategies.
3. Time Management
As a teacher, your day is usually packed with activities around planning your lessons, meeting with parents for learner progress updates, writing and marking tests, attending classes, and participating in teacher events and meetings.
Creating effective time management strategies is essential in ensuring your tasks are manageable. For instance, you can organize creative activities to keep the little ones entertained when lessons are on break.
To effectively manage your time, create a list of all the tasks you need to accomplish within a specified time frame. Then, create a schedule with the most important tasks first and break them into manageable milestones. You can also allocate specific time within the week to mark tests or to meet parents.
In addition, remember to rest up ahead of intense periods of work to get the calm and confidence you need when undertaking busy schedules.
4. Adapting to Educational Trends
Today, educational trends are continually influencing learning processes. For instance, continuous technological advancement introduces apps, websites, and technological tools that, when effectively used, can significantly improve the learning process.
To keep up, teachers can be under constant pressure to stay conversant with the latest technology. In most institutions, more school budgets are needed to allow for the adoption of technology in education.
Many schools use technology to enhance traditional curriculum instruction and not a standalone substitute. This introduces the challenge of a scarcity of curricula on technological application in education.
To navigate this challenge, you can collaborate with other educators who are willing to incorporate technology in their classes to help with the application processes and the provision of feedback. You can also learn from your students and create a learner-centered approach and continually validate your student’s sense of self-efficacy.
5. Experiencing different learning preferences and difficulties
Your classroom will always consist of learners with auditory, tactile, and visual learning abilities. With such diverse learning styles and abilities, one teaching strategy will only be effective for some of the learners.
You have to think strategically when creating a lesson plan, ensuring you cater to all the learning abilities. For instance, you could differentiate your instruction by giving different students different tasks depending on their learning styles. Also, you could include multiple learning activities and instructional methods that target diverse learning styles.
You can also become during your lessons and make real-time adjustments depending on your learners’ behavior in the course of the lesson for better performance.
6. Disciplining students
Teaching gives you the opportunity to work with different learners every year. Though you may have delightful children in your class, it is common to encounter some undisciplined ones. Dealing with discipline issues in your class may be time-consuming and emotionally tasking.
Indiscipline learners interfere with teaching and learning processes and may result in your loss of control, anger, irritability, tiredness, and the loss of your love for teaching.
Using positive disciplining strategies and implementing justified consequences are key in encouraging them to try harder and improve their behavior. For instance, you could refrain from disciplining the learners infront of their classmates, choosing to have the conversations in private.
If the indiscipline cases are persistent, try getting to the root of the problem by involving their parents and creating appropriate intervention measures.
7. Lack of effective communication
Poor communication between teachers and their learners has been proven to result in a lack of motivation, poor performance, and learner drop-out cases. Studies show that the academic performance of learners is directly linked to the nature of communication of their teachers.
Learners are often faced with the daunting task of communicating their needs or struggles to their teachers. For instance, learners at lower levels of learning may need help communicating their triumphs or needs. To enhance communication, you can establish strategies that encourage the learners to communicate their needs.
Creating a safe environment and embracing positive dialogue with your learners is also key in nurturing an interactive and engaging learning environment.
As an educator, build trust with your learners and work on improving your communication skills daily. Also, encouraging teamwork and collaboration between the learners takes the focus off competition and gets them working together for enhanced learning outcomes.
8. Extended working hours
Teaching may involve several tasks, such as lesson preparation, marking, grading, score recording, and progress analysis, that demand that you continue working once the school day has ended.
Although all of your tasks seem to be only possible to complete by putting in the extra hours, you must focus on the tasks that are more urgent and, most importantly, avoid being overwhelmed.
Also, you can request your cooperating teachers to help you with some tasks whenever the work seems impossible.
9. Meeting school administration’s standards
School administrators always seek to remain in competitive positions with other institutions and school districts in terms of test scores, discipline, and performance.
Meeting the competitive standards may put a lot of pressure on you to embrace teaching methods that ensure the realization of the set goals.
Teachers are also viewed as exclusively responsible for learner performance, discipline, professional development, and growth.
With all the duties that a teacher has to perform, the pressure to have the learners perform may leave the teacher stressed, resulting in them performing poorly.
To enhance the realization of administration goals without frustrating the teachers, administrators should regularly source professional development programs for their teachers to improve their teaching methods and update their skills in accordance with the educational trends.
Also, during recruitment, ask to know the administrator’s expectations so that you begin a healthy and valuable employee-employer relationship.
10. Burn out
Teaching can be a demanding profession. The constant pressure to produce results can lead to you experiencing burnout. Teacher burnout has been shown to be a key contributor to teachers quitting.
Each day, you may be juggling tasks that involve educating children, completing administrative tasks, managing learner behavior, monitoring their progress, and updating their parents.
Teaching is also emotionally demanding since it involves shaping learners’ lives and significantly determining their future success.
Such high demand may overwhelm you, resulting in burnout.
Symptoms of burnout include dreading going to work, lacking motivation, and feeling drained during the day.
To avoid burnout, try to create a work-life balance to ensure that you remain productive in the other aspects of your life.
You could also actively engage the administration and parents in the education processes of the learners to ensure they follow up on learner performance throughout their learning period.
How to Become a Successful Teacher
A successful teacher not only imparts knowledge effectively but also inspires and engages students, creating a positive and inclusive learning environment.
And, succeeding in your teaching career helps you appreciate profession better.
Becoming a successful teacher requires a combination of expertise, interpersonal skills, and a commitment to lifelong learning.
Here are some ways in which you can become a successful teacher:
1. Inspire your students
Challenge your students to work harder every day and help them realize the milestones they have never thought possible.
If your students you as a disciplinarian or someone who looks out for poorly done assignments, you can embrace an approach of encouragement, patience, and kindness.
For instance, you can always find a reason to praise the learners individually and collectively for their good work. In addition, you can find particular aspects that each learner engages with and encourage them to develop their interests within those aspects.
2. Prioritize your students’ safety
One of your responsibilities is ensuring a safe learning environment for your learners in dimensions within and without the classroom.
A safe environment supports all your learners in their pursuit of knowledge, sparks their curiosity, and makes them feel empowered to engage in class activities.
In your classroom, make a deliberate effort to create a conducive physical, psychological, and emotional environment for learning.
For instance, to promote kindness, your daily tone should be encouraging and calming, ensuring that all students feel safe and comfortable to focus on learning. Additionally, design your class’ physical setup in a manner that maximizes supporting students’ safety and learning.
Also, design your lesson plan and class activities around encouraging self-expression and celebrating diversity and individual learner achievements.
3. Use various teaching approaches
Embracing various learning strategies in your classroom allows you to accommodate different learning styles.
For instance, you can skip lectures and create group learning activities for the learners. You can also bring tangible objects related to the topic so your learners can interact with and learn from them.
During class discussions, provide your learners with a mixture of abstract thoughts and practical examples.
Remember that field trips and hands-on learning make concepts more memorable to your learners by better conceptualization.
4. Determine classroom rules
Setting classroom rules boosts the physical and emotional safety of your learners and protects their learning experiences from disruptions. For optimal education and emotional success, ensure the class rules are fair and reasonable.
Also, set the rules with clear and consistent consequences to help them understand the boundaries and expectations for classroom behavior.
In addition, all students should understand and feel that the class rules are meant to create a safe learning space, to enrich their learning experiences, and not limit them.
To create the best rules, consider the following:
- Rules should be specific: This is key to ensure the learners understand the rules, leading to clarity.
- Rules should be positive: This will give them a clear picture of what is acceptable. For instance, you could say, “Speak quietly in class,” not, “Don’t yell in class.”
- Class rules should be adaptable: You should periodically evaluate their effectiveness. If a rule is not working at a particular time, change it.
- Your class rules should be few: This way, the rules are easy to understand and remember.
- Rules should have consequences: Establishing consequences will encourage desired behaviors and discourage unwanted mannerisms.
5. Be creative when teaching
Creativity in the classroom will demand that you embrace fun new ways of teaching. For instance, you can introduce concepts using technology and engage learners in more experimentation as opposed to reading textbooks and the theoretical discussion of concepts.
Field trips are also a great way for learners to change their learning environment and improve their grasp and memory of concepts.
Creativity requires you to plan your lessons well in advance and organize all learning materials beforehand. Create monthly calendars to establish the big-picture approach to the course you are teaching.
Ready to Become a Teacher?
If you enjoy working with children, teaching is a gratifying career that allows you to inspire, guide, and shape learners’ futures while earning a living from it.
To become a teacher, you must at least attain a bachelor’s degree and then pass the certification examinations to show your readiness for the career.
Once you have acquired your teaching license, you should start applying for a teaching position in the state you are certified to teach.
Though there are challenges to the teaching career, the benefits outweigh them.
For instance, when you become a teacher, you get a valuable opportunity to make an impact in the lives of your learners and society as a whole. Your interactions with the learners, their families, and their communities give you limitless chances to share your opinions, ideas, and knowledge with others, significantly making a difference in their lives.
In addition, teachers are always in demand, creating a continuous need for your services, hence job security.
Teachers of Tomorrow helps you get to your teaching career faster with alternative teaching certification. Begin your teaching career now.
