The role of the teacher nowadays is more than just giving away a number of facts for students to learn

Should it happen to me to talk about the role of the teacher, I`d like to point out that nowadays it is more than just giving away a number of facts for studenr to learn. Teachers should make learning enjoyable and fun for their students. There are many statements of good teching. The 1^st one is about not only motivating students to learn, but teaching them how to lern and doing so in a manner that is relevant, meaningful and memorable. The 2^nd one is about listening, questioning, being responsive and remembering that each student and class is different. It is about electing responses and developing the oral communication skills of the quiete students.

Good teaching is also about style. Good teachers work the room and every student in it. They realise that they are conductors and the class is the orchestra. All students play different instrumenrs and at varying proficiences.

What is important-good teaching is about humour. It is about not taking yourself too seriously. It is often about making jokes mostly at your own expense, so that the ice breaks and students learnn in a more relaxed atmosphere, where you like them, are human with your own share of faults and short comings.

Good teachers practice their craft not for the money or because they have to, but because they truly enjoy it, and because they want to. Good teachers couldn`t imagine doing anythung else.

5. Your parents ardently praise the soviet educational system and criticize the one we have in modern Russia. Give your opinion on their statements:

• education in the USSR was meant for all;
• it gave profound many-sided knowledge;
• educational system in modern Russia lacks human ideals and is commercialized;
• its future vague and uncertain.

The schools in the USSR are run by the state, and education is free. There are no private educational establishments in our country, nor schools for the privileged. Children are taught in their native tongue, but the curriculum is the same for all schoolgoers.

And now, thanks to our enormous successes in economic and cultural development, we have all that is needed to introduce universal ten-year schooling for our young people.

The changes in the existing school curricula attract special attention. Primary education now takes three in place of the previous four years, and the programme is more sophisticated. Primary school children will be introduced for example, the certain elements of algebra. Scholars and psychologists in collaboration with school-teachers and experts in child upbringing and

teaching methods, have also recast the curricula for senior forms. The new programmes provide for more profound training in physics, chemistry, and mathematics.

The modernization of teaching is dictated by the mounting tempo of the scientific and technological revolution, and the task imposed by the continued progress in all the spheres of economic and cultural life of our society.