To what extent do you think, are teachers responsible for the behaviour and actions of their students?

In my view, teachers are seen to be role models as well as change agents for students. Thus, teachers are responsible for molding and shaping the behavior and actions of their students. In a community, both the teacher and student are in close association, each one sharing the other's ideas, beliefs and practices, customs and traditions, knowledge and feelings.

This will allow the teacher to access and cater to the different teaching methods that they will use for different groups of students. This is reasonably helpful to the students as they will now have a role model for their every aspect of life.

Children learn by imitating. Therefore, it is essential that teachers teaching a group of younglings should pay close attention to their behavior and character development and correct them whenever needed. The teacher's lifestyle also reflects a pattern the students absorb and internalize consciously and unconsciously in their association with one another. For example, a child in kindergarten, when instructed to do something by his or her parent which does not match the teacher's ways would come back with "This is not what the teacher said."

In an assessment of the common patterns of population, it is the teacher who produces the future professionals. It is also observed that one can trace some marks of the teacher's behavioral patterns, training skills, concepts, beliefs and practices among the students that were taught by them. Thus, the kind of professionals manifest both in their private and occupational lifestyles some traits that their teachers have handed down to them.

Teachers teaching students of an older age should be more concerned with their discipline. Those who need the most attention would be the defiant, rowdy, eccentric, quiet, apathetic and the introverts. Social problems are most common among teenagers. This is also the hardest problem to solve as it is difficult for the teacher to understand the student due to the difference in their status. Students also tend to avoid teachers because of the constant probing of their personal life which the student will find unacceptable after a period of time.

Teachers should also be concerned about the students’ after school activities to a certain extent. For example, being concerned if they turn up for their various co-curriculum activities (CCA) as teachers are supposed to be responsible for the student’s CCA points with attendance being a majority of it.

Therefore, teachers should learn to gauge and respond to the limitations of being responsible for their students’ behavior and actions. Some of which include time, financial ability, students character and those in higher positions or parents forbidding them to intervene as they think that they do not have the qualifications to do so.

In conclusion, I think that the teachers’ responsibility of caring for their students should be based on the kind of students they are dealing with along with the kind of education that they are giving to them.