 Teaching as a profession and vocation. It has been debated and has been much deliberations that what is the meaning of the vocation and what is the profession. Vocation is an activity in which you get involved into for the sake of the earning and you invest your time and the skills and the competencies. To deliver something, it becomes the vocation. But for carrying out that vocation, if you require a longer time and a specific type of the trainings or the education for acquiring those required skills, that becomes a profession. The word or the term profession has been used widely in the English language and it denotes different elements or the attributes that are required from an individual. Those are many years of the preparations for the profession. You need many years for the preparations. For example, we are going to be the teacher. You are now required to have a degree of Bachelor of Education or B.S. Education. If you become the doctor, that is a profession, you require MBBS degree. If you are going to be the engineer, you require a bachelor's degree in engineering and then striving for excellence. In the profession, there is always struggle for the excellence because the more struggle, the more excellence in your skills and the competencies and the behaviors, the better will be the reputation and the results and then the dedication to the public interest. How one is serving and addressing the public interest? For example, if I am teacher, I assume my students are the leaders of tomorrow. My nation, my community, my society needs proper well qualified people or the youth so that they should lead the nation tomorrow. They should be the proper and the relevant people in the different fields in the society. That becomes the public interest. As far as the medical doctor is concerned, he or she should be more professional, having more excellence in the profession so that any patient, any person goes and trusts on him or her, then he is serving to that with the cause of the public service to the society and for the public interest and the commitment to the moral and ethical values because every profession has moral and ethical values. For example, if you have a problem and you consult the doctor, medical doctor, there are many things that you may not be sharing with any of the persons except the doctors and you are supposed, you are required to share it with the doctor, otherwise you will not be properly dealt with and you will not be properly diagnosed as far as your disease is concerned. Therefore, you are bound to share your secrets and your problems of your disease etc. And as a professional, the medical doctor is bound to maintain the secrecy of your personality. This is the ethical and the moral values of the profession. And there are two contexts that are profession and the professional. The profession as we discussed that is like the medical medicines and the law and the engineering etc. And the professional is just for the immature such as the fields of the entertainment and the sports. In the field of the sport and the entertainment fields, they are also the profession, they are profession but the people are called professionals because they are falling in other categories. They are not the profession but the term is professional. The framework of a profession tends to include payment. In the profession, for example, you are a teacher, you get the payment of your services, you are doctor, you are engineer, you are getting the payment. And that is also there in the vocation but for the profession that is closely linked with the profession. The better the professional, the more the remuneration. The concept of the profession that emerges from, this emerges from a legal and sociological standpoint that is characterized on expertise, a professional should have expertise, a professional should have governance, autonomy and accountability. These are the four important elements that are the attributes that are essential, that are indispensable for a professional, for a profession. And scholarly, what is the scholarly profession? It is an occupation with the attributes of the profession whose core activity is the advancement of the knowledge. Scholarly profession, one has to have, for example, professor, university professor, college professor or even the teacher has to advance, has to improve his knowledge. And the academic profession is scholarly, is subset, is falling under the category of the scholarly profession. And with the academic appointment in the institution of higher education. Teaching is also considered as a profession because it is for the teacher, the teacher is bound to have commitments to the moral and ethical values because the teacher has to show moral and ethical values. If for any activity, for any vocation, if there is the moral and the ethical values there, then it becomes a profession. And do you think, what do you think, for the teaching is not aligned with moral and ethical values? Yes, it is, it is mostly aligned with the moral and the ethical values. And the teaching is, that's why the teaching is considered as the noblest profession. And as a teaching as a profession, it requires the standard of morality. What is the etymology of vocation? Basically, this word is a latent word, which means it comes from the vocer, which means to call. Vocation is a strong feelings of the suitability of the particular career of the occupation. For example, when if you say that this person has an aptitude to become an architect, to become a lawyer, to become a mason, etc. Then you have to see that what kind of the career one should opt for. Teaching as a vocation, yes, it is vocation, initially vocation and then becomes the profession because where there is the career choice, what should be the career? It is a complete, full-fledged career. It has that because in the vocation, you have to play the different roles. To view teaching as a vocation, then it is required to have a knowledge to call, to serve the others through the means of education and learning. Through the vocation, you serve on the basis of your vocation. Vocation is also based with your learning, but it is not as a professional requirement that of the professional degrees, lawyers, medical, medical fields, etc. The framework of the vocation implies a personal commitment because it is focused on the call, on a call and aspect of the services. There are many services that are available on call. For example, if you call any food supplier and an individual comes and delivers the food to at your doorsteps, this is service and this is vocation. Consequently, to think teaching in these terms, if you think that the teaching is also availability on the call, the role of the teaching itself is to be engaged in and by its role as a default because the teacher is also available, not in a similar way as you call to the shopkeeper or the vendor to provide you any kind of the services, but the teacher is available for the specific services as required in one or the other way it is your call. It is the teaching as a vocation is grounded in the humanistic word view and from that word view, from that philosophical point of view, the teaching is aligned with the services. Is the teaching not service? If yes, it means the teacher is providing a service and service is aligned with the call, availability whenever it is required, then it becomes a vocation. The focus of conceptualizing how you conceptualize teaching as a vocation is more on students for whom teaching activities are carried out than on the teachers because you serve the students. If you look from the point of view of the students, it becomes the vocation because the students are getting your services and if you look at the teachers point of view, the lenses of the teachers, it becomes a professional aspect. If we look at the teaching as a profession or the professional or the vocation, is it loving concerns of the ones students, then yes, the teacher has loving concern for the students, clarity and the patience and there is a personal commitment and assume as a teaching role out of services and selflessness and choices. These are the attributes which indicates the parameters would show the parameters of the vocation as well as the professional. That's why a teacher who practices teaching as his vocation responds to strong feeling or calling for services. Teacher provides the services to the students just like holistic, biblical figures with utmost dedication. Teaching may not be a lucrative position if this is considered throughout the world that there is not having a huge amount you are learning and that's why it is called as the service, service to the society, service to the community. It even means investing your personal time, energies and resources, it is dedication, you serve the community. Sometimes it means disappointment, heartache and the pains because you are not getting more in terms of the money, you are not earning money. But by touching the hearts of the people and opening the minds of your children or the students can give you joy, you enjoy your life and contentment with the money that could you cannot buy through the money and that the joy that you get, you attain through services could be more than if you want to have joy through purchasing something. There are the moments I teach for, these are the moments I live for. This is the quotation of the J.C.T. in 2013.