Why Teaching Matters

What aspect of the text interested me the most?

I was most interested by the idea that it is the classroom methods that are most important to educational growth and not the focus of standards and assessment. While the article does not directly focus on the development of educational standards, it seems to argue that the whether standards or assessments are in place, the classroom methods will have greatest effect on student achievement. In this era of education we have tended to focus on creating standards and effective assessment techniques when the problem in many classrooms is ineffective classroom practices. According to this article, we should not be focusing on finding more qualified teachers necessarily, but teachers that are skilled in a wide range of pedagogical methods, such as critical thinking and hands on learning.

How will you define the effectiveness of a teacher?

This is something that I have been thinking about quite a bit as I have observed in many classrooms over the last few weeks. I think that effectiveness as a teacher comes in many shapes and sizes, that is there is not one way that all educators should follow, but I do think that effectiveness will have some commonalities. An effective teacher will promote and improve students skills that are essential in literacy, such as reading, writing, and communicating. An effective teacher challenges students in their depth of knowledge and ability to think, problem solve, and reflect. An effective teacher applies the knowledge being taught to the outside world giving context to learning. I also believe that an effective teacher develops meaningful relationships with students, adapting when necessary, and has positive influence in the lives that they educate. These are some of the things that I took into consideration while observing in classes over the last couple of weeks, some effective and some not so effective. These will be the areas that I will assess my own effectiveness as a teacher.

Generation IM

There is no doubt that the students of today rely on technology for many aspects of their lives, primarily social networking. I think that using new technologies can act as a supplement to traditional teaching methods. I'm not sure that education must transform to include all of these advances. I'm afraid that if education becomes too technology based, aspects such as reading, writing and face to face human interaction would lose out. I'm not sure that kids truly need technology to learn. I think that having a wide range of teaching skills and methods are more important than using a wide range of technology. Like I said, technology can supplement, but not run the classroom.

Why a teacher?

For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to play Major League Baseball. Growing up, I saw myself doing nothing else. My life was dedicated to sports. In my senior year of high school I had the opportunity to take a class called Careers in Education. As a part of the course requirement I spent the last hour of every school day in a middle school classroom. It was in this classroom that my desire to teach would truly begin. More on this later.