Chpt 1: Concerns with Becoming a Teacher

I have always thought about what makes a good teacher and felt confidently that I would make a good one, but apparently I was thinking along the wrong lines (creativity, patience, etc). According to what I read in Chapter one, a lot of what makes a good teacher is the educational background a teacher has had. According to the text, the quality of a teacher is measured by whether they have a major in their teaching field. This initially concerned me because I do not have a major in education or early childhood development. I have a major in Business and I do not plan on teaching any business courses throughout my years of teaching. Does this mean I will not be as effective of a teacher? Does it mean my students will suffer from my lack of picking the wrong major? According to the text, being a highly qualified teacher is your first step to becoming a good teacher, so what does this mean for me?

After reflecting on these thoughts, I became hopeful that a Master’s in teaching is just as good, if not better than a Bachelor’s degree in teaching. There is a lot of pressure put on a teacher because, as the text stated, future success in school can be predicted by the relationship your student has with you, as a teacher. I have always felt that a teacher plays a pivotal role in a child’s development, but I never thought about it in the sense that it could set a precedent for all future learning. This kind of pressure is intense, but I think it is well worth it and if anything it motivates me to want to be the best teacher possible.

The majority of information in chapter one I agreed with and it did make sense. The classroom is a very important place for students, but every year will be different, as will every child. Therefore, as a teacher you need to be able to adapt your teaching methods and instructions to fit your students’ needs. If not, how will a teacher hope to increase their students’ levels of comprehension and in turn their self esteems?

There is a learning curve in teaching as there is in any other job. The only difference with teaching is that you are set free on your first day of school. You do get some experience in the classroom with student teaching, but for the most part, your first day as a teacher you will be in charge of the whole classroom. My concern with this learning curve is that it will impact the students that I will have in my first few years of teaching. The text did provide some relief from this pressure by stating that you can indeed be a good beginning teacher. It stated that this could happen if you “develop a repertoire of effective principles and practices for your first years of teaching so that some activities quickly become automatic. You can also develop the habit of questioning and analyzing these accepted practices and your own teaching so you can solve new problems when they arise.” I need to be able to analyze situations to figure out what teaching strategies will work best for my students. I hope that these guidelines will help guide me along in my first couple of years as a teacher.