Because few people ever view teaching from the front of a classroom, many fail to understand or appreciate this profession. This report is part of the Tucson (Arizona) Education Association's three-year effort to describe teaching in the words and survey responses of teachers themselves, drawing appropriate parallels and contrasts with other occupations. Teachers serve as instructors, counselors, and classroom managers and are responsible for planning, acting, and evaluating functions associated with these roles. Few teachers, however, participate in planning or evaluating district policies, programs, and procedures. The study identifies 25 different teacher responsibilities performed frequently and with intensity. Teachers manage time constraints well, relying heavily on skills, knowledge, and resources acquired through personal experience. The study identifies two professions comparable to teaching--television news director and civil engineer; it finds teaching a decision-making process requiring exercise of discretion and judgment in situations that rarely allow application of routine solutions to clearly identified problems. Average teacher salaries are comparable to jobs with much less responsibility. The isolation of teachers from administrators and each other impedes teachers' performance. Seven charts are included. The accompanying exhibit file includes Tucson teacher job description survey forms and survey and content analyses of teacher responsibilities and job resources. Teachers describe their profession as a challenging, stressful one requiring a high degree of knowledge, effort, and interpersonal and managerial skills. Teachers have opinions about the teaching process, attention to individual students' needs, special education students, administrative and clerical duties, discipline problems, time pressures, and other factors influencing their job performance. Other exhibits summarize interviews with those in other professions, and outline a group discussion between teachers and interviewers. The last nine exhibits are concerned with salary comparisons and teachers' ability to improve compensation with credit for previous teaching experience. The charts show teachers to be underpaid compared to their counterparts in other occupations involving a narrower range of responsibilities. (MLH)