In the winter of 2020 the VIRUs COVID-19 spread worldwide and overwhelmingly, having consequences at all scales, including education. Constant Lockdowns around the world meant that training systems changed from face-to-face to remote. Not Blended or e-Learning, but remote.

Governments, educational systems and schools have offered distance learning and teaching without much preparation, planning and digital expertise.

What teachers do we need after the pandemic?

Our schools and teachers, who fulfilled their educational function in the last century, are no longer fit for the current challenges. From our educational systems, we need citizens to acquire the necessary skills to minimize these risks, skills that go far beyond learning traditional knowledge, in many cases in a mechanical and not very comprehensive way. And for this to happen, having teachers capable of doing so should be at the top of our priorities.

What competencies should the new teacher have?

• Teachers with a flexible and strategic professional identity: The teacher is a multifaceted professional with diverse fields of knowledge: expert in the subject he/she teaches, communicator of it, tutor by taking care of the personal development of some students, ensuring compliance with the rules of coexistence in their classes, evaluator of their teaching system. But he/she must also be a more flexible and strategic teacher, able to adapt to the circumstances and make decisions about it, as well as to connect the extra-academic reality with the school.
• Teachers who represent good role models: Bandura is the first psychologist to emphasize the importance of modeling; he is to this day recognized for his contribution to educational psychology. It is "one of the most powerful means of transmitting values, attitudes and patterns of thought and behavior". For this author, if knowledge were only produced on the basis of the direct effects we experience from our own actions, that is, through trial and error, development would occur very slowly. "By observing the actions of others, observers can acquire cognitive skills and new patterns of behavior. Learning can consist of new behavior patterns, evaluation criteria, cognitive competencies, and generative rules for new behaviors."
• Teachers who promote democratic participation: Keeping students' needs and motivations in mind is a well-known and repeated aspect when we start designing our classroom plans. For real engagement and involvement in the classroom, involving students by allowing them to introduce topics of their interest into the syllabus, in addition to increasing transparency, increases student engagement and involvement.
• Dialogic teachers: Dialogical Pedagogy is a pedagogical approach that recognizes the different human dimensions, its contextual, socially mediated and historical character. Learning is a social construction in which the most important tool is dialogue. We all learn thanks to the mediation of other voices, with whom, through dialogue, we negotiate the sense and meaning of what surrounds us. This is the reason why teachers must master different forms of dialogue according to their educational objectives.
• Innovative teachers: Motivated teachers, who believe in what they are presenting and like the way they are doing it, considerably increase the motivation of their students. This interest in constant improvement and innovation must be accompanied by updating and inquiry. This is closely linked to the last point, the evaluation of teaching activity.
• Teachers who promote security and confidence in students: The pandemic has increased uncertainty about the future, especially for those students who are less resilient. Teachers must have the resources to provide security for all students. By extension, the school must be a place of inclusion, where mistakes can be made without problems. Therefore, binary grading systems of pass/fail should be removed from the curriculum.
• Teachers who can handle the hybrid teaching format: We need versatile teachers, able to connect with the culture of their students and design hybrid environments that guarantee the best learning for their students.
• Teachers able to motivate students able to involve students in useful projects: In such a changing world, teachers must select the contents and competencies to be taught based on an "exit profile" that guarantees that their students will be able to face the main challenges of their personal, local and, if possible, planetary context.
• Teachers work as a team and in professional networks: Traditionally, teaching has tended to be an individual, if not directly isolated, task. The COVID-19 crisis has clearly shown that coordinated work, in which there is an exchange of ideas, activities and materials, is infinitely more productive, pleasant and safe. Planned and consensual work, with a common trajectory of continued participation over time, offers a guarantee of quality that leads to improvement in education.
• Self-critical teachers: assess their evaluations: Since teaching quality is a key factor in educational quality, educational systems need to develop reliable mechanisms and rigorous evaluations to identify the strengths and weaknesses of their teachers.

John Ruskin, a famous British social reformer of the late 19th century, whose ideas greatly influenced Mahatma Gandhi, wrote: "to educate a child is not to make him learn something he did not know, but to make him into someone who did not exist". To face the great challenges of this century, we must trust that once again those who treasure our best capital, our educators, will have learned from these crises and will be able to promote, through their students, what now seems impossible, that is, a peaceful, just and equitable society, within a healthy and sustainable planet for many more centuries to come.

This text is based on the analysis of the text "EL DOCENTE POSPANDEMIA Nuevos retos, viejas necesidades", by David Valenzuela.

Bibliography:

1. "EL DOCENTE POSPANDEMIA Nuevos retos, viejas necesidades", 2022- David Valenzuela
2. "Changing Roles of Teachers in Post COVID-19 Era"- Research Paper FLSHAC June 2022 - Abderrahman el Oufir
3. "What the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us about teachers and teaching", Nov 2021 - Andy Hargreaves
4. "How the pandemic has changed teachers’ commitment to remaining in the classroom",Sept 2021 - Gema Zamarro, Andrew Camp, Dillon Fuchsman, and Josh B. McGee
5. "The changes we need: Education post COVID-19", 2021 - Yong Zhao1,2 and Jim Watterston1
6. "El trabajo colaborativo en red impulsor del desarrollo profesional del profesorado", Jul-Sept 2017 - Maria José Navarro Montaño
7. "El modelaje como fuente de aprendizaje", 2015 - Johana Contreras