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Before Being A Teacher And After Becoming A Teacher Term Paper

¶ … Teacher and After Becoming a Teacher Teachers come across as experts who have mastered their skills and always deliver quality as though it was part of them. They seem to experience no problem as they effortlessly deliver their content. This was my view as I sat in class after watching my teachers, and thus, choosing this career with its simple structure, which was easy for me. This was, especially so, because I wanted to impact lives and be an agent of change by enabling others to exploit their potential. Teachers are a great source of change and they greatly impact lives and values (Sieben, 2013).

Grant and Zeichner (1984), quoting John Dewey (1933), stated that a teacher can either be reflective or unreflective. Reflective action is more conscious. It requires that the teacher puts their teaching in the contemporary context. It involves including the relevant information from the social and political context. It demands an open mind, responsible action when it comes to choices made as well as a teacher giving themselves wholeheartedly to the profession (Grant and Zeichner, 1984). They go on to explain that a reflective teacher must be ready to take into account the various options that are available rather than going for the norm or the easiest cause of action. Moral choices must be made, especially when one cause of action must be chosen over another. The unreflective teacher follows routine...

he/she will look for the readily available option to achieve their goals without much input from themselves. A teacher must choose the type of teacher that they want to be (Grant and Zeichner, 1984).
While in the field, this decision confronted me as I had expected to follow the structure and well tested traditions. However, I was called upon to be reflective because of the various situations that I faced. An example of this was in the choice of the subject I taught, as I realized that it was a moral choice. Teaching one subject over another had consequences and placed a responsibility on me, even though the subject was part of a syllabus, and thus, structured.

Constructive pedagogy as brought out by Brooks and Brooks (1999), can be difficult considering that it involves directing students to find out things for themselves, instead of following what is accepted. This is an approach that has faced a lot of opposition from teachers. They give various reasons for this, such as fear of losing control of the classroom, unwillingness to adopt something new late in their careers, existence of tried and tested approaches, and impact on the student's learning process. Some teachers have grown accustomed to control and run a strict routine where the student must adhere to set rules, and receive teacher approval before attempting anything (Brooks and Brooks, 1999).…

Sources used in this document:
References

Baltas, A. (2002). Self-confidence -- respect. Aktiveline 27, 24-26.

Brooks, J. G., & Brooks, M. G. (1999) In search of understanding: the case for constructivist classrooms. Alexandria, VA: the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Dewey, J. (1933) How we think: a restatement of the relation of reflective thinking to the educative process. Chicago: Henry Regnery & Co.

Kahl, L. J., & Fine, M. J. (1976). Teachers' perceptions of the school psychologist as a function of teaching experience, amount of contact and socioeconomic status of the school. Psychology in the Schools, 15, 577-582.
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