Teacher 365: Juggling a Multitude of Roles – May 2025

By David Shaffer

When we think of “teacher,” many of us create the mental image of an adult with book in hand standing in the front of a classroom addressing a roomful of students listening attentively. We think of the teacher as holding a Monday-through-Friday, 9-to-5 job, or thereabouts. But how realistic is this stereotype of a teacher? For every teacher who confines their school-related work to school hours, there are easily a dozen who take hours of work home with them. A teacher’s work seems to never be done – seven days a week, 365 days a year. And unlike the mental image above, we shall see that a teacher’s job is truly multifaceted, with a multitude of roles to fulfill. May 15 is Teachers Day in Korea, but by looking at the language teacher’s multifarious roles, we will see why every day should be Teachers Day.

The Teacher as Controller

The mental image of “teacher” that we described above best typifies the role of controller. This is one of the roles that a teacher has, but it should not be the role of a teacher. As controller, the teacher must arrange the learning environment. This entails maintaining a degree of control over classroom activities, giving instructions, and organizing activities. The controller role is quite evident in whole class activities where the activity centers around the teacher, often with the teacher imparting knowledge to the students, clarify grammar, and asking questions. The controller is also in charge of maintaining a physical environment conducive to learning: comfortable temperature, proper lighting, fresh air, and noise control.

The Teacher as Assessor

Another traditional role of a language teacher – or any teacher, for that matter – is that of assessing the students’ progress. This has conventionally been done by administering written midterm and final exams, as well as periodic quizzes. But in addition to this summative form of evaluating what a student has learned, teachers employ formative assessment as well to enhance learning rather than simply evaluate it. This provides continuous feedback to both the teacher and students during the learning process. By identifying strengths, gaps, and areas for improvement, formative assessments help teachers adjust their instruction to better support students in reaching course goals. Effective formative assessment techniques that the teacher may rely on are observation and anecdotal notes, class time polls and surveys, informal mini quizzes, exit tickets, concept maps, and peer and self-assessments.

The Teacher as Manager

In their role as class managers, EFL teachers are responsible for creating an organized and productive learning environment. This involves establishing clear classroom rules and routines so that students understand what is expected of them in terms of behavior and class participation. Teachers must also make decisions on seating for whole-class activities (e.g., free or assigned), as well as for pairwork and groupwork (e.g., similar or differing proficiencies, or similar interests) to facilitate effective collaboration and communication. Time management is another key task for teachers to consider. Planned activities must be allowed sufficient time for students to successfully complete, and at the same time not be allowed to run too long to lose student interest.

The Teacher as Resource

One’s first thought may be that this role is essentially the same as the role of controller in that they dispense knowledge to the students, clarifying grammar and asking questions. These are all things, however, that the teacher determines as being what is most important for the class to know. As a resource, the teacher makes themself available to students to provide information that the student requests. These student queries may be related to grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, meaning, culture, lifestyles, or a multitude of other topics that students may be curious about. Fulfilling the role of resource is quite important, as it is through being curious and motivated that students learn best.

The Teacher as Prompter

When the student comes to the teacher-as- resource looking for help with some aspect of their learning, the teacher has two choices: They can directly provide the requested information, or they may provide a prompt that initiates problem-solving on the part of the student. This process may be iterative: teacher prompt, student response, teacher feedback and additional prompt, student response… The latter is more effective. Solutions discovered by students are better internalized than those provided directly by the teacher.

The Teacher as Monitor

Once the teacher has assigned their students to do some activity – whether it be pairwork, groupwork, or individual work – they can sit at their desk or stand at their lectern or computer console and occupy themself with something quite unrelated to the students’ activity. Or they can, and should, involve themself by observing the students and their progress with the activity. As the teacher moves around the classroom, they may elect to give corrective feedback on the spot and move on, they may instead offer a prompt for the student to attempt their own correction, or the teacher may opt to collect frequently made errors and discuss them at the end of the activity with the whole class. In addition, monitoring is helpful to the teacher in making improvements to their lessons for future use.

The Teacher as Participant

While the teacher is moving around the room during groupwork, they may elect to pull up a seat and insert themself into a group for a period of time, not as an observer but as an active participant in the group’s ongoing discussion of their task. This fosters engagement on the part of the students and strengthens student–teacher relationships. As a participant, the teacher may simultaneously perform the roles of teacher- as-resource, teacher-as-monitor, and teacher- as-prompter. Both the teacher and the students benefit from teacher participation.

The Teacher as Role Model

“Do as I say, not as I do” never works. If a teacher is frequently late for class or raises their voice to gather the class together, the students will think it is acceptable for them to do the same. The teacher is a role model, whether they consciously strive to be one or not. Therefore, it is imperative for the teacher to model desirable behavior.

Showing students how to conduct themselves through the teacher’s actions will produce much more desirable results than merely telling them how they are expected to behave. Additionally, language teachers must model pronunciation, spoken language as opposed to written text, and speech acts, as they are fundamental to social interaction and communication.

In and Out of the Classroom

The roles mentioned above are just some of the roles of a classroom teacher. There are numerous other roles that a teacher assumes – some in and others out of the classroom. Here is a brief rundown.

• The Teacher as Counselor: Students often seek out their teachers to help them with school or out-of-school problems unrelated to their coursework.
• The Teacher as Admin: Administrative work is often assigned to teachers rather than to full-time administrative personnel.
• The Teacher as Professional Developer: Conscientious teachers are constantly seeking to improve their teaching skills through such activities as formal courses, individual study, and conference, workshop, and webinar participation.
• The Teacher as Mentor: The experienced teacher may volunteer to mentor a novice teacher new to their institution.
• The Teacher as Planner: In addition to preparing their individual lessons, a teacher may be charged with course design or curriculum development.
• The Teacher as Researcher: It is not uncommon for teachers to engage in academic research and present it at workshops or conferences, or report it in academic journals.
• The Teacher as Technician: In this edtech era of computers, software, apps, and AI, it is imperative for the teacher to be skilled in operating high- tech classroom equipment and incorporating educational technology into their classroom lessons.

As we have seen, a teacher is not just a “teacher” but is a multi-faceted educator, both in and out of the classroom, both in and out of their school, 24/7, entitling them to the moniker “Teacher 365.”