→ "What’s the job of teacher? The crying need for a genuine job description." →
I like the late Grant Wiggin's attempt to write a genuine, outcomes-based job description for teachers:
An educator must arguably cause four things in learners:
greater interest in the subject and in learning than was there before, as determined by observations, surveys, and client feedback
successful learning related to key course goals, as reflected in mutually agreed-upon evidence
greater confidence and feelings of efficacy as revealed by student behavior and reports (and as eventually reflected in improved results)
a passion and intellectual direction in each learner
This is a great starting point, and one could add a few more points specific to teaching at a Jesuit school like mine. Importantly, Wiggins also makes clear what is not the job of the teacher.
With a genuine job description we can finally tackle a great problem in education, the common view that the job is to cover the content. No: marching page by page through a textbook (or the written curriculum) can never be your job as a teacher – ever. The textbook or curriculum is written completely independently of your goals and students; it is a generic resource that merely pulls together a comprehensive body of information and lessons in a package for use by thousands of people with varying needs all over the United States.