Becoming a Teacher

What are some challenges that teachers face in the classroom? Motivation: Motivating the students to work, set goals and own the learning is probably one of the biggest challenges teachers face. () Mary Jo stated that she is continuously finding different activities to keep the students attention span as well as keeping them from being bored. There are several different personalities in the classroom so the challenge to keep all personalities happy and motivated is not always the easiest task to complete.

Time: Fitting it all in, especially in the Elementary classroom. Teachers spend 90 minutes a day on math and 90 minutes on Reading. That leaves very little time for Science, Social Studies, English, Spelling and just time to get work done. Also times for planning some schools do not have art, gym, or any other extra curricular classes where the teacher can have extra planning time. Most teachers are lucky to get 30 minutes a day to grade, plan, call parents, address discipline concerns, and tutor students who are behind, etc. Most teachers spend an average of an additional three hours a day outside of the classroom teaching time. Mary Jo will spend her additional time either in the evening at home or immediately after school contacting parents or focusing on specific issues from that particular day. ()

Academic Diversity: Teachers have students reading from a kindergarten level all the way up to an eighth grade level. Mary Jo’s entire curriculum has to be differentiated to accommodate these differences in each student. () I feel that this would be a hard challenge for me if I had a large class. I am a very positive person and would not want to separate any children from each other and make the student feel unintelligent in any way.

Parents: Parents attitudes are sometimes your biggest battle. Most parents will fight tooth and nail to support their child even lie and cheat and do the work for them. The best way to deal with this