Teach­ers con­tin­ue to make an im­mea­sur­able con­tri­bu­tion to our na­tion's suc­cess and will con­tin­ue to do so as long as stu­dents are will­ing to learn. So said Pres­i­dent of the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) Rous­tan Job at the launch of the Teacher of the Year 2011 on Fri­day at Cas­ca­dia Ho­tel, St Ann's. Job, in ad­dress­ing Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh, 2010 Teacher of the Year Is­abel Bur­ris-Paul and teach­ers said that it was in the hands of teach­ers that the world must en­trust their most pre­cious re­source-the child-to be "pre­pared in all their glo­ri­ous di­ver­si­ty to face the rigours of in­di­vid­ual par­tic­i­pa­tion in a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic so­ci­ety". "The role of the teacher re­mains the high­est call­ing of a free peo­ple," said Job, re­mind­ing them of US Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma's State of the Union ad­dress in which he said that "af­ter par­ents, the biggest im­pact on a child's suc­cess come from the man or woman at the front of the class­room".

In South Ko­rea, Oba­ma not­ed, teach­ers are known as na­tion builders. Job, ex­pound­ing on the im­por­tance of teach­ers, stat­ed that in Kenya in 2008 the Kenyan Na­tion­al Union of Teach­ers urged the gov­ern­ment to de­clare the short­age of teach­ers a na­tion­al dis­as­ter. Re­fer­ring to writ­ers David Hes­elko­rn and Louis Har­ris, Job said in their book the "Es­sen­tial Pro­fes­sion", a sur­vey of pub­lic at­ti­tudes to­wards teach­ing, ed­u­ca­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ty and school re­form showed that teach­ing was rat­ed num­ber one-62 per cent-as the pro­fes­sion that pro­vides the most ben­e­fit to peo­ple in so­ci­ety. In sec­ond place was physi­cians at 17 per cent, fol­lowed by nurs­es with six per cent, busi­ness peo­ple five per cent and lawyers three per cent.

Politi­cians, jour­nal­ists and ac­coun­tants each got a one per cent rat­ing as the pro­fes­sion that pro­vides the least ben­e­fits to so­ci­ety. On Fri­day, TTUTA launched the 2011 award in the name of the founder of TTUTA, the late Frank B Seep­er­sad. The award recog­nis­es ex­cel­lence in ed­u­ca­tion. Job said TTUTA takes great plea­sure in giv­ing ho­n­our and praise to out­stand­ing teach­ers and ed­u­ca­tors an­nu­al­ly, "those men and women who con­tin­ue to touch the lives of each of us in such a pro­found and sig­nif­i­cant way".