Being a Teacher

Contributed by:
Sharp Tutor
Learning Outcome:
“We teach who we are!” Describe what that means.
Think about how the hidden curriculum affects the climate in the classroom.
Explore the support systems that are in place for new teachers.
Compare the lifelong learning needs of teachers with those in other professions.
Start your own teaching story as you explore teaching as a career.
1. Chapter 2 Teaching Stories
Teach3
Introduction to Education
By Koch
1
2. Learning Outcome
After reading this chapter, you should be thinking about the following ideas:
• “We teach who we are!” Describe what that means.
• Think about how the hidden curriculum affects the climate in
the classroom.
• Explore the support systems that are in place for new
teachers.
• Compare the life long learning needs of teachers with those
in other professions.
• Start your own teaching story as you explore teaching as a
career.
2
3. Key Terms
• Teacher burnout
• Hidden curriculum
• Learning communities
• Professional development
• Goodness of fit
• Mentoring
3
4. Guided Notes
Directions: Write the question and the answer during
lecture.
1. Who is the “typical” US public school teacher, statistically
speaking {as in race, gender, age, and level of education}?
2. What are two misconceptions about early-childhood
education?
3. What are some of the rewards of teaching?
4. What are the signs of teacher burnout?
4
5. Guided Notes
Directions: Write the question and the answer during
lecture.
1. What are 5 challenges of teaching?
2. What are some strategies for overcoming teacher burnout?
3. What is the average annual salary for a US public school
teacher?
4. What is the hidden curriculum?
5. What is mentoring/induction?
5
6. • Being a teacher requires an emotional and
intellectual commitment. In a typical school
day, teachers can experience excitement,
frustration, pleasure, angst, leaps of joy as
well as sadness.
• How ready are you to navigate these
emotions-while at the same time staying focus
on your goals for the day?
6
7. Taking the Roll Call for
Students and Teachers
• 56 million student are enrolled in American
public and private elementary and secondary
schools.
• 3.7 million teachers
– 400,000 private school teachers
7
8. U.S.A. Public School Teachers
– 83% white
– 84% female
– 29% under age 30
– 49% age 30-49
– 30% age 50 and over
– 55% have a Master’s or higher degree
With the increase diversity of USA students, many educators believe
that USA schools have an urgent need for young teachers from
various ethnic backgrounds.
8
9. It is important for the profession that more men
enter, since researches have asserted that male
role models are significant figures in the
9
10. Early-Childhood Education
• There are many more early • What they learn and
childhood teachers today experience in their early
than there were just a few years shapes their views of
years ago. themselves and the world.
• Pre-school, • Early-learning programs,
prekindergarten, and enrolling children as young
kindergarten play a vital as three years old, are seen
role in the development of as the key to closing
children. achievement gaps.
10
11. • Students develop social
skills through play
{empathy, impulse control,
• Early-childhood educators capacity for sharing,
are dismissed by society as communicating, and
glorified “babysitters.” problem solving}.
• This is incorrect and
damaging to the profession • Play based activities also
and to an understanding of enhance children’s capacity
the crucial role that early to think creatively, make
learning plays in the choices, explore their
development of healthy environment, and develop
children and productive prewriting skills and
students. sequencing skills.
11
12. • Perhaps the most dominate misconception about
early-childhood education is that it is not as work-
intensive as teaching in the higher grades.
• In fact, preparing a curriculum and activities for
young children requires many hours of research and
careful planning.
12
13. Deciding to Become
a Teacher
• When teachers are “common thinking is that
teaching is simple. But teaching
asked why they decided
isn’t simple. It’s a highly
to enter the profession, sophisticated intellectual activity
they often say, that requires, among other
– I love children things, a centered presence in
the classroom, good negotiation
– I love of learning skills, understandings of
– I love school pedagogy and psychology that
inform one another, and
sensitivity to sociological factors
in learning.”
– Jackie Grennon Brooks {2002}
13
14. • Not everyone who enters
the field has had a lifelong
calling to teach. Yet life as
• There are many a teacher becomes
researchers who believe fulfilling when there is a
that excellent male good match between the
teachers have a strong person and the demands
of the profession. This is
positive impact on
referred to as goodness
student achievement,
of fit.
especially, of male
students. {Dec. 2005,
2006}.
14
15. KHS Demographics
I have emailed a survey to you. Please take time
to complete the survey before the next class.
We will look at the results together.
15
16. KHS Climate Survey
Directions. If you did not receive the email with
the survey you will need use the link below to
complete the KHS climate survey
docs.google.com/forms/d/1W-bSIpMZesH-dYDeYiwg
bGQ2KtKTX_eEK0Wx84PMNu0/edit
16
17. • 21st Century Teachers:
– Spend an average of 50 hours per week on all teaching
duties.
– Teach an average of 21 pupils in a class at the elementary
level and 28-35 per class at the middle and high school
level
– Spend an average of $443 per year of their own money to
meet the needs of their students
– Enter the teaching profession to help shape the next
generation.
17
18. Why Do You
Want to Teach?
Use MLA format to head your paper.
List 20 reasons why you want to be a teacher.
Number each reason and skip a line/space
between each answer.
Due: next class period
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19. Excitement and Challenges
“Every September, every teacher proceeds into
foreign territories.”
– Maxine Hong Kingston, Distinguished Writer and
Professor (1986)
19
20. • Kathryn: “When I started teaching, I lived for
the light bulb moments-the times when
difficult concepts finally clicked for a
students.”
• Amanda: “It has been my greatest joy to see
that student who struggled so much in an area
work hard and become successful.”
20
21. • Jessica: “The most exciting aspects of
being a teacher are the possibilities that
come with each new day.”
21
22. Rewards of a Teaching Life
• Meeting new students
• Everyday is a new challenge and that nothing
is ever the same.
• Amanda notes that the process of teaching is
more exciting than the outcome.
• Excitement of reaching the children and
recognizing that they “got it” as it related to
new knowledge construction.
22
23. Teaching, Learning,
and Burnout
• A learning life refers to a desire to know more
and to have the skills to acquire new
knowledge when the need to desire arises.
• Burnout is the condition of teaches who have
lost their motivation, desire, sense of purpose,
and energy for being effective practitioners.
23
24. • Burnout can have serious consequences for
the health and happiness of teachers, their
students, and the families with which they
interact.
• Teacher burnout is the condition of teachers
who have lost their motivation, desire, sense
of purpose, and energy for being effective
practitioners.
24
25. What are strategies for
overcoming teacher burnout?
• CLASS DISCUSSION TO GENERATE THESE
ANSWERS – muhahahaha!
25
26. Most Difficult Challenges
for Teachers
• Paperwork • Request for
• Grading information (nurse,
• Extra help SPED, parents,
administrators,
• Lesson planning community)
• Phone calls • Attendance reports
• Make up work • Progress reports
• Student handouts
• Focusing on personal
• Student work
purpose
26
27. Journal Writing
Answer the following questions in complete
sentences:
-How has your overall experience been in the introductory
education course you are taking?
-What have you discovered about the teaching profession that
you did not know previously?
-What has been a surprise for you in this class?
-At this point, how do you feel about a career in teaching?
27
28. Teaching and Vision
• All teachers have their own sense of what a
classroom should “look like” and how it should
function.
• Yet these visions of teaching are as variable as are
the individuals who choose to teach.
• Our beliefs and images concerning teaching are often
difficult to enact: there is often a disconnect
between what we imagine and what we can practice.
28
29. • It is in this way that who we are comes to bear
upon what we do with children and how we
engage them in learning.
• Our personal lives meet our professional lives
in the classroom.
• Your students will learn a lot about you, and
you will also learn a lot about them.
29
30. Hidden Curriculum
• The stories we tell students about our lives ad
experiences outside of school are one small
part of what may be considered the hidden
curriculum: what students learn as they
participate in the act of going to school, being
part of a classroom, community and relating
to their peers and their teachers.
30
31. • The hidden curriculum includes how we
interact with students, how we enact the rules
of the school culture, and how we
communicate or expectations for student
achievement and demeanor and our own
passion for teaching and learning.
• Teachers can contribute positive or negative
to the hidden curriculum.
31
32. Who Provide the Most Support for
Teachers?
• Amanda:
– “I have found it supportive to listen to fellow teachers and
the administrators, students, parents, and community
members. You can learn a vast amount from
conversations with others. IN a crowed teachers’ room, I
am the one who is content to sit alone and listen in on
others’ conversation.”
– “I find keeping a teaching journal and jotting down what I
discover about the students and the school to be very
helpful. I try to make entries two to three times a week.”
32
33. Mentoring New Teachers
• Mentoring has been a trend over the past ten
years as the teaching profession has
recognized the need to develop a special
transition period during which the new
teacher acclimate to the profession.
• This is often called Induction.
33
34. • Mentor teachers are specially trained to work
with new teachers and support them in
understanding the school culture, the
curriculum, and the resources available to
them as professionals.
34
35. • Good mentors have a broad range of skills
and are able to help new teachers apply their
professional knowledge in the classroom.
• They are generally master teachers who have
demonstrated a love of teaching and learning
and are eager to share their experiences with
others.
35
36. Guided Notes
Directions: Write the question and the answer during
lecture.
1. What is the information technology revolution?
2. Define “learning community.”
3. What is an example of professional development?
36
37. Teachers as Lifelong Learners
• We are living in a rapidly changing global
environment in which youngsters’ and adults
lives are drastically different than they were
even 10 years ago.
• We are all experiencing the Information
Technology Revolution.
37
38. • This explosion of information, along with the
continuous connectedness that we all feel as a
result of internet and cell phone technology,
has changed the pace and progress of our
daily lives.
38
39. • Many educators think • Professional
of schools as learning development is
communities, a term teachers’ lifelong effort
that emphasize to improve their skills
interaction and and professional
collaboration in the knowledge.
learning process. It
conveys the idea of
‘always learning’.
39
40. “To teach is to learn.”
•To improve our practice requires targeted
efforts at our own growth as teachers and
40
41. Benefits of Lifelong Learning
• Teachers are expected to keep up with the
latest developments in education.
• Financial incentives to continues to learn
though professional education courses at a
college or university or through professional
development courses, often referred to as in-
service courses offered by the school district.
41
42. Professional organizations play a major role in
expanding your development.
– American Federation of Teachers
– The National Science Teachers Association
– Association of Texas Professional Educators
(ATPE)
– The Delta Kappa Gamma Society International
(DKG)
Many teaching resources are available at no
cost online through these professional
organizations.
42
43. Why join a professional organization?
• Journals and publications
• The opportunity to publish and write
• National and state legislation support
• Current industry trends
• Certifications
• Legal support
• Scholarship opportunities
• Philanthropic/community support
43
44. Concluding Thoughts
Teaching demands so much from the individual
Learning about other teachers’ hopes, dreams,
and experiences, gives you a way to consider
what teaching might be like for you.
44
45. Good teachers plan supports including a variety
of tasks, materials, and scaffolding tied to the
specific learning objective.
Your teaching philosophy is a work in progress
and will most likely change with time and
exposure to new ideas about how people learn.
45
46. Teaching is hard work and requires that you be
reflective, ever conscious, and well prepared –
that you be a centered presence in the
46
47. 5 Pieces of Advice for New Teachers
by Keith Hughes
My First Year Teaching High School Expectations vs Reality by Dawn Christyna
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ek
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q NZU5dwWw
D7kJJDCi8U
47
48. Teacher Teacher!
– Trace the body outline of a group
member
– Draw in the face, fingernails, etc.
– Identify ten qualities of a great teacher
– Name the teacher
– He/she must be wearing school
appropriate clothing and an ID Badge!
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49.
50.