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| Becoming
a Teacher
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Contents
1. Introduction
2. Art and students’ development
3. Satisfaction of teaching
4. Social skills
5. Types of teachers
6. Conclusion
7. Bibliography
Introduction
Traditionally, teaching was very important and often high
professionalism of teachers defines the level of education
students receive. This is why it is extremely important to
carefully analyze the experience of teachers’ work that
can help better understand possible advantages and drawbacks
of different ways of teaching which are characteristic of
different types of teachers.
In fact, nowadays teaching methods and techniques may vary
dramatically. Nonetheless, there are some universal values
and basic principles that should be always taking into consideration
while analyzing the work of a teacher or while becoming a
professional teacher. Basically, in the current situation
it is necessary to pay a particular attention to individual
approach to each student in order to better understand the
personality needs and demands of each student. Also it is
necessary to develop essential social skills in the process
of teaching to the extent that students could be socialized
and become an integral part of modern society.
At the same time, it is necessary to remember that teaching
is the two-side road where teacher and students constantly
interact and influence each other. In such a situation, it
is extremely important that teaching brought satisfaction
not only to students but teachers as well.
Anyway, the major goal of each teacher should be the development
of their students in accordance to the basic demands of the
modern world as independent, intellectual, social, and responsible
citizens. The basic goals of education and teaching in particular,
may be achieved in different ways and in this respect, the
effectiveness of teaching depends on a type of a teacher which
may vary dramatically.
In such a way, in order to become a real teacher it is necessary
to clearly understand all basic needs of students and demands
contemporary teachers should meet.
Art and students development
Obviously, in the current situation the role of art in the
teaching process and educating of students is extremely important
and cannot be underestimated. It is necessary to underline
that art should be an integral part of the teaching process
because it is due to art students can develop in harmony and
develop essential skills, acquire important experience and
get accustomed to universal humanitarian principles and values
which can really unite people and contribute to tolerance,
equality and prosperity of human society.
This is why it is necessary to analyze the lessons of Mrs
Cotter in a Junior Kindergarten classroom and Mrs Brandon
in a Grade 6 classroom. Basically, both teachers use arts
in their lessons that is obviously quite useful for the students
development. It should be pointed out that in Mrs Cotter’s
classroom students attempt to the abstractly painted black
area near the center of Miss Judy’s painting. Basically,
this activity is quite interesting and involving students
to work. At the same time, it is really thought provoking
and emotionally colored because students really want to participate
in this activity and, what is more important, their creative
abilities are involved since they should develop their creative
thinking in order to qualify in their own way the visual information
they see. In such a way, students have to develop their creative
and critical thinking since to fulfill this task they should
synthesize the visual information with the emotional and intellectual
experience they were having with the work of art .
At the same time, it should be pointed out that the lesson
is a bit chaotic because students, being overwhelmed with
emotions, are getting to be more and more involved, some students
cannot even stay on their seats and start to interrupt each
other in attempts to draw the attention of the teacher, which,
in her turn, seems to get losing the control over the classroom.
Obviously, it does not contribute to higher effectiveness
of the lesson because some students are deprived while the
whole class is getting to be in a kind of mess.
At the same time, the teacher does not directly link this
lesson to previous ones this is why it is hardly possible
to trace whether students are prepared for such activities
and what is its long-term purpose because it is logically
to wonder whether students have already had such experience
or probably this activity is totally new for them. This is
why, on analyzing this lesson, it is possible to recommend
starting with some activities which would help student to
revise what they have lardy done during previous lessons and,
consequently, they would establish a strong link between their
past experience and current learning process.
In this respect, another lesson in Mrs Brandon grade 6 classroom
is quite different. It is necessary to underline that the
teacher starts with the reminding of what students were doing
during the previous lesson. When students answer is getting
to be evident that they dealt with symbols and, what is more,
similarly to the previous lesson art was also involved. To
put it more precisely, students learned what symbols are and
at the present moment they are supposed to present their own
symbols which they depicted in the form of paintings. As a
result, the effect of such activity is, to a certain extent
similar to the previously discussed lesson, i.e. this activity
provokes creative thinking of students, though it is probably
not always critical since they deal with symbols of their
own and, thus, express their subjective views. This is why
it is possible to recommend asking students to take into consideration
the point of view of their peers in order to critically evaluate
the symbols they have drawn. Also it is possible to recommend
trying group work when students can critically evaluate each
others symbols.
Furthermore, both lessons are characterized by involvement
of art which though are quite helpful for the development
of students verbalization skills since they have to either
convert visual information into verbal one, as it is in the
case of Mrs Cotter’s classroom, or, in contrast, they
should convert the verbal information into visual one when
students qualify visual image into their own words, as it
is in the case of Mrs Brandon classroom, when students express
their ideas in the form of paintings. In such a way, a multiple
effect of development of creative and critical thinking along
with verbal and communicative skills and abilities is achieved.
In fact, students really learn the power of words .
Satisfaction of teaching
However, it is not only students that benefit from such lessons
but teachers as well. At the same time, it is necessary to
remember that the high level of teaching satisfaction may
be achieved only on the condition of high effectiveness of
a lesson. Obviously, teaching satisfaction is extremely important
since it stimulates teachers to constantly improve their skills
and abilities trough acquisition of new experience. On the
other hand, it is necessary to remember that satisfaction
of teaching is mutual for both teachers and students and both
benefit from it.
In this respect it is worthy to note that there are several
basic satisfactions . First of all, it should be pointed out
that teaching provides an opportunity for teacher to introduce
to their students the idea that they can progress constantly
and that education is a constant and uninterruptible process
which lasts as long as life endures. In such a context both
lessons may be considered to be quite successful since they
establish strong connection of students teaching to arts which
naturally will always accompany them in certain way. At the
same time, such a combination of art and teaching contributes
to the development of skills, such as creative thinking, which
will be helpful in the future life of students. Moreover,
students can realize that the skills they acquire in the lessons
discussed could be widely used in their everyday life since
both symbols and qualification of visual information along
with its verbal interpretation are a constituent part of human
life and are always used, even though they used unconsciously.
Another satisfaction of teaching is immortality. Applying
this criterion to the lessons discussed it is again possible
to remind that it is hardly possible to find something more
immortal than art. In this respect, it is worthy of note that
immortality implies not simply realization of eternity of
life but it also implies the persistence of certain ideas
and images that can be once learned and then get deep rooted
in human mind. For instance, a successful qualification or
symbol students in the lessons discussed have once found,
or the image of teachers, and so on.
The latter, by the way, opens new opportunities for revealing
another satisfaction of teaching – the performance.
What is meant here is the fact that teaching provides teachers
as well as students with ample opportunities to play their
own cello. At the same time, it is necessary to underline
that the role of teachers in such a situation is extremely
important and, returning to the lessons by Mrs Cotter and
Mrs Brandon, it is possible to estimate that Mrs Cotter provided
freedom for students to perform their own cello practically
without limitations, though this, as it has been already mentioned
above, may be considered a kind of drawback because it brought
up certain turbulence in the teaching process. Instead, Mrs
Brandon, along with ample opportunities of performance, provided
her students with a good organization of the lesson preserving
sufficient control over the classroom.
Furthermore, teaching also provides ample opportunities for
artistry and memorable forms of aesthetic experience that
could be observed during both lessons discussed above. The
importance of artistry in the teaching process can be hardly
underestimated because it really contributes to the development
of highly aesthetic, intellectual, and creative personalities.
On the other hand, teachers also benefit from it because they
really reach the balance and harmony in the teaching process
through involvement of students into artistic work or sharing
similar artistic values.
Also, it is necessary to remember that passion for learning
is another important factor that contributes to the satisfaction
of teaching. Unquestionably, if teachers manage to provoke
a profound passion for learning in their students than it
will be possible to state that they have achieved one of the
major successes in teaching. In fact, passion for learning
is probably the cornerstone of the development of students
since it makes the learning process less difficult and often
it may be achieved by means of implementation some interesting
ideas in the teaching process. In this respect, the lessons
discussed may be also assessed positively since they provoked
profound interest of students to art and creative work, developed
their critical thinking and communicative skills.
Finally, it is worthy of note that often teachers forget that
the child made whole. The teachers whose work is analyzed
obviously realize the importance of this idea because they
do not limit themselves with certain learning material, or
certain set of skills their students have to develop. Instead,
they provide possibilities for creative work, intellectual,
aesthetical and social development of their students.
Social skills
Unquestionably, social skills are very important for effective
development of students. In fact, social skills are the basis
of the future life of students because they need to be naturally
integrated into social life, they have to possess high communicative
skills and abilities in order to constitute an integral part
of the community they live in.
From this perspective, the lessons discussed are also quite
effective because they provide students with ample opportunities
to develop their social skills. To put it more precisely,
they could better understand each others when they attempted
to qualify the visual information they saw, or when they attempted
to express their ideas and emotion by means of visual images
which served as symbols.
At the same time, it is possible to recommend wider using
of group work since it will make the development of social
and communicative skills more efficient, while both teachers
basically focused on the work with the whole class, depriving
students of a possibility to work in groups of their peers
and, consequently, minimizing opportunities to establish social
links within such groups during the teaching process.
Types of teachers
Naturally, willingly or not teachers play the defining role
in the teaching process. This is why it is very important
to clearly understand what a type of teacher could be the
most effective in the current situation to the extent that
such a teacher could achieve possibly better results in educating
students. In fact, it is practically unarguable fact that
every teacher is unique but, nonetheless, it is possible to
classify all teachers into several types according to their
style of work. At the same time, it is equally unarguable
that the type of teaching produce a significant impact on
the teaching process at large and on each lesson in particular,
creating a particular relations between teacher and students.
Generally speaking, it is possible to single out three basic
types of teachers. The first type is authoritarian. Traditionally,
authoritarian teachers tend to plan furniture arrangements
in the classroom and to plan schedules that seldom vary. Basically,
such teachers believe that this is their sole responsibility
to make all class rules and establish consequences for misbehavior.
The second type is permissive. Teachers that follow this style
often appear to be tentative and powerless and, by the way,
it is possible to say that Mrs Cotter tends to be one of representatives
of such teaching style, which is obviously not the best one.
In fact, typically for such teaching style Mrs Cotter made
few rules and was inconsistent in establishing or delivering
the consequences of misbehavior that led to the effect of
loosing control over the classroom.
Finally, there is a democratic type of teachers to which Mrs
Brandon may be referred to. Traditionally, democratic teachers
are neither permissive nor autocratic, instead they are firm
and reasonably consistent about their expectations for academic
achievement and students behavior. This is why, as Mrs Brandon
has shown such teachers provide their students with certain
freedom but do not loose the control over the situation and
to do this they often discuss the need for rules with their
students.
Conclusion
Thus, taking into account all above mentioned, it is possible
to conclude that teachers play an extremely important role
in the process of education. In actuality, they can define
the outcome of the teaching process and it is their responsibility
to provide possibly more efficient development of students.
As the analysis of the lessons discussed above has shown there
are different types of teachers among which democratic one
is the most effective one. At the same time, to achieve positive
results in teaching it is necessary to provide harmonic development
of students, including not only their intellectual but also
aesthetic and social skills. Unquestionably, nowadays teachers
should widely use art in the teaching process since, as both
lessons demonstrate, it can really contribute to the development
of students personality, especially their critical thinking,
creative and verbal skills. On the other hand, the development
of social skills was significant but potentially it could
be more effective if group work was used. Anyway, such lessons
should be viewed as an essential experience that provides
opportunities for the further professional growth of those
who want to become a good teacher.
Bibliography:
1. Eby, J. Teaching Styles. 36 no7 139-45 Oc 2006.
2. Eisner E. The Satisfactions of Teaching. Educational Leadership
63 no6 44-6 Mr 2006.
3. Meier Catherine R., James C. DiPerna, Maryjo M. Oster.
Importance of Social Skills in the Elementary Grades. Education
and Treatment of Children 29 no3 409-19 Ag 2006.
4. Quinn, R. The Artistic Possibility of Words. Kappa Delta
Pi Record 42 no2 88-91 Wint 2006.
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