How I Became a Teacher

Ever since I was a child, I have always loved school and learning.  The new ideas that were brought to me through books and my teachers’ instruction thrilled and inspired me, no matter what the subject.  In math and science, because I was always so quick to pick up on new concepts and ideas, my classmates would frequently ask me for help with homework and studying for tests.  I think, for this reason, I decided after graduating high school to study to become an engineer. It was not until halfway through my college career I realized I was in the wrong field.  I had been making great grades, but I was not happy.  Through a volunteer experience teaching ESL I had while doing an engineering internship in the Twin Cities, I realized I did not want to construct buildings.  Instead, I wanted help some of the workers on the construction site who, because they had no other choice, were working twelve hour days to construct those buildings.  I wanted to teach them English and basic academic skills so they could someday have a job that they loved, instead of one that barely paid the bills. When I returned to school the semester following my internship, I immediately switched my major to teaching.

The Beliefs I Hold as a Teacher

For the rest of my undergraduate career, I primarily studied the linguistics of Spanish and English and took teacher education courses.  I loved every second of it, and through being a student myself, critically reading pedagogical literature, analyzing different research studies, observing classrooms and teaching my own classes, I have developed beliefs that guide my teaching practice today. 

The first belief I have is how a teacher should approach a class. There is a statement about family that says, “When Momma ain’t happy, nobody’s happy,” which I believe carries quite nicely over into teaching, “When the teacher isn’t happy, the students aren’t happy.”  As a teacher, when I walk into my classroom, my attitude affects the attitudes of all my students and therefore, sets the tone for class that day.  That is why I believe it is crucial to not only love what I do but also show that passion through my teaching.  This idea of the importance of a teacher’s attitude stems from a Spanish teacher I had in high school.  Her life-loving attitude and smile always kept the class upbeat.  As a student, my mood and motivation to learn always improved when I stepped into her classroom.  She was always the first to notice if I was having a good or bad day and lend an ear if I wanted to talk.  She did not treat me like a student who she was supposed to instill in her knowledge of Spanish in; she treated me like her own child with whom she was supposed to guide in my exploration of life.  Her classroom is something I strive for mine to be.  Not just a room full of sombreros and Day of the Dead shrines, but an environment where students feel comfortable to open their minds and hearts to new ideas and experiences. 

To create this type of environment, I look to the other beliefs I developed throughout my education and beginning teaching experience.

I believe there is no “one size fits all” theory for education because learning occurs in all ways shapes and forms.  A student can learn implicitly, explicitly, visually, aurally, kinesthetically, etc. As a teacher, I strive to foster an environment that allows my students to learn through whatever environment best suits them.  I believe in integrating as wide of a variety of teaching approaches into my classroom as possible so I can see how each of my students individually responds to different approaches and decide what strategies work best for the particular group of learners I am working with. 

Getting to know my students as individuals is crucial because I believe everything I teach should be meaningful to my students.  By knowing my students as individuals, I can directly relate the learning goal of my lesson to daily occurrences in my students’ lives and tailor classroom activities to my students’ extracurricular interests, making my instruction more meaningful to each of my students’ unique circumstances for learning. 

In addition to my strong belief in differentiating instruction, I believe students need to practice in order to improve their skills.  Learning in a classroom is like learning to play a new sport.  In order to master a new sport, an athlete must do more than just learn the rules.  The athlete must practice on a regular basis and actively interact with the rules as she plays.  The rules in writing may be always having a thesis statement or never ending a sentence with a preposition depending on whose field she is playing on.  In order to master whatever subject is at hand, a learner must do the same thing.  She must learn the “rules” and then learn to apply in them in her speech and writing.

While working to develop new skills, I believe students should not be afraid to make mistakes.  It is rare for learners to do something correctly on their first try.  In my classroom I strongly reinforce the idea that by making mistakes, a learner shows that he is willing to struggle in order to succeed and point out, when a learner makes a mistake, the mistake generally sticks out in his memory, and he is less likely to make the same mistake again. 

The beliefs I have listed that guide my teaching practice today are not static.  As I continue to grow and develop as a teacher, my beliefs will grow with me, changing and developing along with my experience and learning.

Lifelong Learning

After preparing to become a teacher during my undergraduate career, I decided to specialize my education a little more by working towards a Masters Degree in Teaching English as a Second Language.  In graduate school, I found myself studying and teaching at the same time.  As a result, there was one major question that was constantly floating around in my mind, “Am I teaching to study or studying to teach?”  The answer was both.  I was teaching in order to gain teaching experience and to pay for my tuition.  I was paying for tuition so I could learn from teaching professionals and experts in my content area how to improve my teaching.   At first, teaching and studying at the same time drove me crazy.  I wanted to dedicate more time to lesson planning and helping my students develop as individuals, but I could not because like them, I also had homework every night, projects due each week and every other Friday.  Needless to say, I was looking forward to the day I could finish being a student and solely focus on my teaching.

That was, until one day in the middle of the semester, I realized that day would never arrive.  I was reading about the history of Second Language Acquisition and realized how much its pedagogy had developed over the past few decades.  Year after year, from Audiolingualism which teaches language through repetition to Content Based Language Learning which teaches language through the medium of a content that is not the language itself,  researchers and teachers had worked together to develop ways to improve the education system.  As I reflected on the progression in education that had been made by others, I realized I was never going to cease being a student.   When I become a fulltime teacher, I expect myself to continue to work to develop education which means the question, “Am I teaching to study or studying to teach?” will never go away. 

As a teacher, I am a student.  I will always be searching for new knowledge on the content area that I teach and for different methods to share knowledge with my students.

It is more important to me to help others than it is to help myself, but I cannot help others effectively unless I continue to help myself.  During my teaching career, I will search for ways to teach my students more effectively through consulting to others, reading literature, attending professional development seminars and most importantly, personal reflection of my own and others’ teaching and learning.