Are you cut out to teach or run a Preschool?

Let us find out if we are indeed cut out for working in or running a Preschool. The best way would be to see from the point of view of a recruiter. A  recruiter would look for the following qualities in the teachers who would be part of the team •     Love for kids and patience with them:
Working and spending hour after hour with very young children who demand physical, mental, and emotional alertness. It can be very exhausting and draining. Teaching Toddlers can be very challenging as communicating itself is an uphill task with them. They may not even understand you to begin with. Only a person who genuinely loves kids can wade through these difficulties and reach out to the young minds. The teacher needs to be compassionate and empathetic to children. It is imperative that very sensitive children feel good and secure. Only this can help them to open up and respond positively to the school. So a teacher has to be gentle as his/her polite attitude towards managing the class can go a long way to help the kids open up. Yet the teacher should also maintain orderliness and discipline.

Another important aspect is that the influence that the teacher has on the child. Every child is exploring both himself and his surroundings. He/she tends to absorb everything from the school, especially the teacher. So deep is the impact at this stage that the preschool teacher practically molds the child’s experiences into a set template. The influence of the surroundings is very high on every child of this stage but more so on the teacher as apart from the parents, the teacher is the most constant adult at this point. Therefore it is very important that the teacher imparts not just intellect but also positive emotions and this can be done only by an individual who genuinely loves the child.  Every child needs to be individually attended to and sensitively too. Just like the child absorbs the learnings he or she also absorbs the emotions and nonverbal cues as easily. A teacher will have to keep positivity and affection flowing at all times. This in turn can be done only and only if the teacher is really passionate about children. •     Necessary qualifications:
High Stakes: The formative years of the Children are too precious to be handled or risked without proper training. IT is an absolute must that the people working with children should have formal training and education in the subject. They should have done specific courses on Early Childhood which covers child learning and the different developmental phases involving supervising and managing young children. No need to reinvent the wheel: With plenty of well-researched information into child psychology and well-developed pedagogy, it is only natural to expect the teachers who handle the children to be armed with all that knowledge through an acknowledged and assessed course. All expertise cannot be learned through experience or trial and error. Besides passion, a formal technical qualification is ideally required to be a good preschool teacher.The legal requirements: In most countries a professional certification in preschool teaching is mandatory. The law demands a degree/diploma program in early childhood education or pedagogy. An exposure to minimum teaching experience is greatly valued.  So formal qualification becomes non-negotiable terms. Though rules laid down for a preschool teacher may vary in different states but a basic rule demands fulfillment of some formal qualification.Parent’s Confidence: Qualifications also help instill confidence in the parents and helps the school’s brand image. Parents are very sensitive and apprehensive about leaving their kids in school. The fact that the teacher taking care of their child is specifically trained and qualified exclusively for this actually calms them down and helps them handle the situation better. •     Highly motivated and exemplary communication skill:
Preschool teachers indeed play an immensely important role in the formative years of child learning. As mentioned earlier, the child not only imbibes intellectual learning but also emotions and social habits, and culture. A positive and joyful attitude towards life must be induced into them. As very young children these are things which can be taught only through example. A teacher should be able to motivate and stimulate young learners. From a very small age, kids look up to their teachers as icons and try to copy them in every possible way. The teacher stands responsible to boost the morale of the children and motivate them to learn. Fluent communication skills and interpersonal skills are integral parts of a pre-school teacher.  Interpersonal skills beyond mere fluency in a language will be demanded of the role as exchange and engagement with toddlers demand much more than normal communication. The children who come from various backgrounds are still very raw and are at an impressionable age. So it is all the more important that they understand the messages in the sense it is supposed to reach them. The teacher should be able to teach the young learners irrespective of their religion, caste, nationality, etc. The teacher needs to be vigilant and understand that every child needs a different kind of interaction and communication. Control of the class and managing the kids have to be done with loving yet firm hands. Hence it is the responsibility of the teacher to set good ideals before the children and inculcate good values in them through examples more than rhetoric. •     Open to learning and upskilling :
In today’s world of the 4.0 revolution, change is perhaps the only constant that we can depend on. Everything, including the way of living and career options, is changing fuelled by technological advancement. To make sure that we are imparting relevant information and habits to our kids, we must upskill and learn continuously. From the inception of learning, a teacher can inculcate and improve study habits. This will help children to grasp new concepts and enable children to enjoy new concepts of learning interestingly. To stay relevant and provide the best, the teachers too like other professions have to keep Investing in updating themselves. It is also necessary to update oneself to guide students to use technology to find the latest information, assess its validity and communicate with experts. Understanding the student’s mind and emotions and nurturing the learning process is possible only by keeping up with the technology that they are using. Besides teaching, a teacher should learn constantly to cater to and mold a child’s understanding of this rapidly changing world.•     Handling parents and good communication skills.
The curriculum or the school is only a product that the school strives to deliver but the actual delivery happens only through the teachers. Every preschooler has a very responsible, caring, and often protective parent who is the decision-maker. The teacher will have to work with the parent for the child’s complete development. A teacher will have to have the tact and maturity to assuage a parent’s worries about the child’s safety and guide the parent to mold the child and channelize his or her abilities. There may be instances of parents expecting something very drastically different from what the child is naturally inclined to be. Forcing the child into the interests of the parents could actually prove to be detrimental and cause stress to the child. There might be bad or wrong influences on the children without their parent’s knowledge. All these need to be communicated to the parents. A child’s complete and healthy development can be achieved only if the environment at home and school are aligned, which can be achieved only if the teacher and the parents are synced. Communication between the parents and the teacher is the major contributor to this. Therefore a teacher must have the ability to guide, help, and handle parents.