Has your desire to teach changed in any way over the last 16 weeks? Please explain your answer.
My desire to teach was tested a lot over these past 16 weeks. Some weeks I could barely contain the excitement of picturing my future classroom, and other weeks I was wondering if this is really what God has called me to do. EDU 110 challenged my heart in ways I wasn’t expecting, but I can now confidently say, that becoming an educator is the right path for me. Seeing all the “negative” aspects of teaching stressed me out, but I’m grateful I was asked the tough questions because now my decision is more solid than ever.
What has stood out as the most influential (either positive or negative) aspect of this course? Why? The most influential part of this course was observing teachers not only in class observations, but also through videos shown. I was encouraged to see that modern media represents teachers fairly well. In movies, teachers tend to come off as “having it all together”, which I personally think would be helpful when getting closer to my license. Observing actual teachers in actual classes was eye-opening. I knew that teachers vary greatly from each other but I didn’t realize just how much. It helped me to understand that in the future when I have my own classroom, I can be completely different from another teacher coworker, and our students will still have the opportunity to get a good education. When I first walked into our EDU 110 class, I didn’t feel like I was walking into a classroom of future educators due to preconceived notions, but leaving class on Tuesday, I definitely felt the fire of educators in there.
Is there content that we’ve covered in this class that you agree/disagree with? Please explain. Content that we covered in class, that I agree with, would definitely be our guiding principles. I agree that having our own guiding principles are what’s going to push us to show up and do our best on days that we might not want to do that exactly. When we completed our guiding principles assignments, I had to honestly think through what will be the most driving and most influential principles for not only my students, but for me.
What questions do you have moving forward? The main question I have moving forward, is what exactly should I do to make sure I don’t become part of the 5 year teacher burnout rate? Teaching is my passion and I want it to stay that way, but I know I have to be cautious. So what exactly are the precautions I should take?