Teaching Job Satisfaction: A Need or an Option

To find a niche for happiness in what you are doing is a great achievement in itself. Job satisfaction can also be addressed as Job Contentment or Happiness in one’s profession. It does not necessarily mean you are fully satisfied with the salary, environment, colleagues, customers and your duty but it is the gem to find satisfaction or contentment in what you are and what you are doing. This activity is not a onetime exercise but a continuous focus of energy. To reach any stage of life, one needs certain preparation. When we are witnessing Artificial Intelligence, E-learning, Multiple learning portals, you may ask yourself, if physical presence of teachers is a requirement to impart knowledge and learning to students? Being updated with the mind-trends of this generation students will be one effective way to find cooperation and also attain Job Satisfaction on the work front.

Your perspective:
If you happen to see a group of untrained youngsters in your class, causing havoc and disturbing the already uncalm situation, perhaps you are missing the entire reality of the future. You are one such personality adding trouble to the existent troubles of life. On the other hand, if you see possibility, innovation, creativity in the sweat stinky, smelly socks and noisy boys and girls of your class, you are already having Job Satisfaction here and now. You are in the right place and we need people like you. Continue to expect the unexpected and be open for changes and surprises. Your class is packed with these possibilities. Your perspective can either give you satisfaction or increase your blood pressure. It can sicken you or give you longer life. It all depends on your outlook towards the potentials in the persons of those boys and girls in your class. How you see, say, react and perceive also will influence the young minds in front of you.

Teaching as a mere profession:
If you are in the sacred job of teaching, but unfortunately not opted for it, then this circumstance can adversely affect your effectivity in the cycle of learning-teaching. It could be that you will be motivated to teach just for the sake of attendance, allowances, salary or petty benefits. You may not be really satisfied with the job. If that is the case, you are in a profession that is far from your heart. Your inherent motif will soon be noticed by those around you. May be teaching-earning is just a convenience but not a satisfying module of life in your case. Yes, teaching is beyond classroom interactions and more than remunerations.

Teaching as a source of happiness:
Teaching is not only imparting knowledge but influencing others with your whole personality. The former is easier achieved while the latter is subtle with lasting effects in the lives of students. Very often, the latter is missing or negatively imparted to young minds. Your personality is a total of your past, present and future perspectives.

In my High School, I had a teacher who was in love with his profession. He knew every person’s name in the class and the boarding of more than 120 boys. He would encourage students to pursue music, games, drama, elocution, etc, side by side with the intellectual books of the school. He was always happy to be with the students and he would mingle with them as a friend, guide, mentor and an elder brother. In the evolution of life, I began to reflect that this teacher was a source of happiness because he himself found teaching as a source of happiness. I never heard him grumbling about this merge salary. Perhaps he saw a sea of possibilities in his students that made him happy to contribute to their lives. Oh, what a noble personality. “No one should teach who is not in love with teaching” said Margaret E. Sangster. It is always a good personal journey to have quite-time and see the happiness-quotient in one’s job. You can either be enslaved by your job or be enlightened by your job itself.

Who guides whom:
If you expect that all things will go well everywhere, then you are in the wrong place. This world is not like that. If you are angry because the students are noisy, uncooperative, unproductive, then you are being controlled by them (their behaviours). The purpose of being a teacher has turned upside down. Hello, you are supposed to influence, inspire, activate and appreciate. You are not a teacher to control, command, frighten, weaken, belittle, discourage students.

Rita Pierson opines, “Every child deserves a champion – an adult who will never give up on them, who understands the power of connection and insists that they become the best that they can possibly be.” Identifying a potentiality in others is also an important trait of a teacher. In the process of teaching-learning, if you realise that you are engineering the lives of so many persons, this awareness itself will provide you a good percentage of happiness or Job Satisfaction.

Fr Paul Lelen Haokip