So+You+Want+to+be+a+Teacher!



__** WEEK 3 - SO YOU WANT TO BE A TEACHER? **__
Our guest speaker for week 3’s lecture was Howard Nicholas. He gave us an insight into the challenges in learning to be a teacher through some very interesting videos and songs. After showing us the Pink Floyd video ‘The Wall” (1979), Howard explained that the message to be taken from this is - we shape the atmosphere of the classroom. When we think about this in more depth it becomes clear how powerful that actually is. School is the place that primary school children’s world is based around. They spend X amount of hours in the classroom everyday 5 days a week, and for most case, the activities of the classroom will be the topic of conversation when the children return home in the evenings. So, my point is, that we have the power to shape the atmosphere of this room that is such a huge part of these children’s lives. For me this is a huge motivation to learn and practice strategies in order to create the right classroom atmosphere. Howard showed us a video of an interview with Jaime Escalante and also an excerpt of a film made about him. In his interview Jaime talks about the challenges of teaching and emphasises that mistakes are OK and mistakes are how we learn. In the film clip we see how Jaime took complex ideas and exemplified them for the students (“Fill the hole!”). He gave a problem to the students in another form so that they could visualise it. He did not give up when the students couldn’t guess the answer, he kept encouraging, gave thought time, kept prompting and got a positive result in the end. He related to students on their level. ( “Net head!”, “Finger man!”) Howard spoke a little about presentation, saying “presentation isn’t everything but it helps!”. Another issue which sparked some thought with me, and we also touched on this in the workshop , is the issue of classroom content. We were asked to think about what our views of content were : //What is relevant content for the classroom?// As Howard mentioned, there is not enough time to teach everything , so how do we choose what is relevant content? I think this is a good issue to bear in mind as it seems to touch all aspects of what we teach -> it needs to be kept in mind when creating a curriculum, choosing exercise books and right down to each individual lesson.- //What do I want the students to take from this lesson? Which aspects of this lesson are most relevant?// -> Who need to know what and what are the limits of what a teacher can do? Howard left us with some good points/questions to keep us thinking: - What are the elements of practice you need to have? - What kind of theory will you need? And lastly….. - A sense of humour is important! “When you reflect are you also being reflexive?” by Thomas Ryan talks about the need to be self reflective and the difference between being self reflective and being reflexive. He explains how being self reflective is important for self motivation and professional development. Being personally reflexive on the other hand involves introspection and blankets over mental wellbeing and thoughts and emotions. He categorises reflexivity into - hyper - reflexive, systematic reflexivity and epistemic reflexivity. In Beginning : The Challenge of Teaching, the author talks about what her expectation of teaching was before she stepped into the classroom - mainly instructing and performing. She later discovered that teaching included a whole range of different actions, and the roles that teachers need to take on (judges , psychologists , generalists). The article talks honestly about the real life difficulties and complexities with teaching and why there are reasons for many people //not// to teach. She follows this by talking about the reasons that many people want and //do// teach. She challenges the myths that entomb teaching. Orla Mackintosh

__Response: Penelope Harris__ This weeks lecture left me with many challenging questions, some of which I don’t yet have answers to. Listening to Jaime Escalante reminded me that students often only remember the great teachers. The ones who connected with individuals, who were encouraging, passionate and treated students with respect and taught them to be proud of themselves. These attributes are values that individual should value within themselves. Unfortunately teaching is more than just making students learn critical points. Teaching can shape students lives, so it is essential teachers don’t quit. I realise, after the workshop that my pedagogy needs more thought. Just teaching is not enough. “Teaching is instruction, advising, counselling, organizing, assessing, guiding, goading, showing, managing, modelling, coaching, disciplining, prodding, preaching, persuading, proselytizing, listening, interacting, nursing and inspiring”. Beginning: The Challenge of Teaching. These are huge roles to fill and to do well. This article looks into many myths of teacher and the romantic view points that many have, prior to starting to teach. We are all walking into the unknown. We will not full understand the impact teaching will have on us and our students. But as the Beginning: The Challenge of Teaching states, “The reward of teaching is knowing that your life makes a difference", if I can achieve this, I will feel that my job was done. Today I helped in Prep class. The students were asked to write their names on the back of their work in correct Australian Cursive Script. One little boy was very anxious when it was time for him to do this. He asked me to help. So we started with me writing his name and he traced over it. I then asked him if he could now write it himself. With some hesitation he started. I realised part way through that he could do all the letters except for an “e”. It was this “e” that was causing him such concern. I explained the order in which to write an “e”, I placed some dots on the paper, one as a starting point, one to show where he needed to circle up to and one to show where he needed to circle down to. Success he wrote an “e”. Again he was asked to write his name, same nervous expression, but he gave it a go. All was going well until the “e”. He asked me to draw the dots; I encouraged him that he could do it without the dots and to give it a try. He did and again he wrote an “e”. I know it’s not the same as many of the teacher challenges that exist, but for one little moment I was so proud that I had made a difference to him. Tonight he was going home to show his parents that he could now write his name. For this task, with this child, my job was done. Penelope Harris 19th March 2009

__ Response: Kellie Fenton __ I particularly liked reading __Beginning: The Challenge of Teaching__ W.Ayes (2001) because for some reason it put some of my fears about next year into perspective. It talks about our first year out teaching, and how at times we'll be grabbing on to threads here and there, working too much, feeling overwhelmed, making mistakes then re-working them, being frustrated, creative, surprised and inspired and... in doing all of this we are actually stitching together your own individual teaching tapestry. A tapestry that will continue to grow as your career expands and changes direction. A great visual analogy i think! Reading this made me realise that these worries I have about next year will most probably come true, but infact these will be the things that help me build into the best teacher I can possibly be. Without experiencing the highs, the lows, the crazy times or the exciting times I'll not know the possiblities and limitations that can be achieved in this great profession.

I think teacher education these days aims to get us to understand that teaching is not just instruction, performing and "being up front and centre of the classroom". We learn that teaching, is a constant learning journey and one that must re-invent itself over and over as the world around us changes. That it's not simply "I teach... you learn" anymore. We need to be flexible, verstile and open minded in our approaches and techniques. However, I think we will all be surprised how versitile we need to be, and will become, to accomodate our school community, parents and students. It's not just about being an expert in our classroom in terms of teaching practice and knowledge. As Penelope has mentioned it involves a whole range of abilities and to add a few more on; it's about compasion, first aiding, organising, playing, cooking, singing, dancing, public speaking, gardening, decorating, program developing, researching, searching, collecting and probably many more things. I think we can readmany theories about the mind skills we'll need, but often forget all the hands on parts to being a great primary teacher and personally think that's what makes primary teaching sooooooo fantastic!

I also appreciated the fact that the article acknowledges that you will enter your classroom with your own prior knowledge! Your own memory about past humiliation, experiences, triumphs, breakdowns and break throughs. These things are of course going to be there, but i believe its a matter of using what your know, with what you've learnt, and to not let them get in the way of the job at hand. I think, if you have a solid teaching philosophy (which i need to work on...), you can work past any undesirable past memories and aim to develop new one's based on what you set out to acheive as a teacher. Kellie Fenton 23rd March 2009

__ Response: Genevieve Hoban __ I enjoyed Howard's lecture i liked how Howard talked about how we are all indiviudals and we will all have different experiences that we bring to the classroom. I like the notion that we are going to be constant learners throughout our teaching careers. I thought the example of Jaime Esclante was great, particularly the idea that he found his first year of teaching frustrating but this also gave him the opportunity to learn from and correct his mistakes in the following years in the classroom. As Penelope said it is important teacher's don't just quit and if we can try and make positives out of our mistakes or frustrating experiences then i think we will be adaptable and respected teachers.

The discussion about where our responsibilities finish as a teacher- this was interesting in the tute listening to people's thoughts about what parts of the student's life and wellbeing we are responsible for: and does this stretch to out of school duties and responsibilities? The lecture's discussion about what is relevant in the classroom was interesting. IN the tute when we looked at the pedagogy, or the science of teaching, it was great how we had to try and sum up what we thoght was at the core of a good teaching. My partner and i chose the word relevance. We chose this because we felt that if you didn't have relevamce in the classroom then there was probably no point in the students being there. I think that relevance extends all the way from content covered in class, to the amount of detail the content is covered in all the way through to how much time is spent on avtivites. I think as teachers we are going to have to be constantly deciding what is relevant and what's not in order to work forward with our classes. //Genevieve Hoban 28th March 2009//