What are job duties of an elementary teacher?

patience, knowledge of education, understanding, organization, instruction, focus, problem solving, expirience with kids. any others?

MY ANSWER IS A LITTLE BIT DIFFERENT...

Regardless of the age or subject matter, a teacher must have/learn these skills:

To be a teacher you have to be: willing to learn, take on many task, extremely flexible with daily schedules, and have patience of gold. Being a teacher does not just mean you work with kids and stand in a classroom and teach. That's the easy part of teaching. That's the fun part of teaching! Teaching requires you to take on many roles such as: janitor-sometimes your class isn't cleaned or there is no cleaning staff so you have to clean it yourself, counselor- listening to students and parents share personal and private life/family events, child advocate- reporting any child abuse or suspected abuse, take on the role of a parent-some parents don't care about their child's education and you may never see or hear from them the entire school year despite poor grades and many calls home, teachable- you should never walk into any teaching position believing you know-it-all... because you don't. There will be curriculum you will have to master, ongoing professional training courses will need to attend, and teacher collaboration meetings where you will learn and share new teaching methods, secetary-answer phone call, return emails, schedule meetings, leave messages, input student scores to district data base and on-line gradebook, correct many many many student assignments, understand state standards and align lessons to appropriate standards, keep bulletin boards in classroom current with student work, allow administrators, parents, and other teachers in your classroom to observe your teaching skills, and most importantly you should have very consistent and well thought classroom management skills. If you are unable to control your classroom and students are not paying attention to your lessons it really doesn't matter how well you do any of the above task because you're not teaching and students aren't learning.

These are only a few skills it takes to be a teacher and if you become one you will find out all the other skills involved. Teaching is a very rewarding career because you do so much and get so little thanks or appreciation back in return. The reward is watching your students succeed and grow into the person you know they can be.