Practice what you preach
Chris Betcher twitter an interesting comment that has had me thinking for a while.
” How many teachers do you reckon spend their day teaching kids to write, but don’t actually ever write themselves? Interesting“
How many of us do practice what we preach. How many people in your school are active writers? In mine I know of a couple who are, one or two are bloggers and host their own websites, another has published on Mixbooks an excellent selection of her own poetry. One or two staff are authors - writing textbooks. So in two hands I can count the staff publishing with fingers to spare.
If you look at the school, do they encourage blogging, microblogging (twitter), social bookmarking, web publishing through mediums like wikis, ning, personal pages etc? How many of the teachers get out and do?
If you ask a biologist what their passion is, do they go out an do it? Does your Outdoor educator (do you have one) go out an have adventures? OPC (Outdoor Pursuits Centre) encourages their staff to practice their passions, they believe this brings life, excitement and relevance back to their work. Do we encourage staff to practice their passions? do we facilitate and support these?
I find it interesting that almost every Art teacher I have ever met is also a practicing artist. Could you say the same for every English teacher are they a publishing author, poet or critic? Do our language teachers actively engage in their language of choice, do they live and breathe the culture, skype their colleagues in the country of choice?
Do we live the values that society expects teachers to pass onto our students?
I find blogging and wiki-ing a hugely useful reflective process, the value of reflection can not and should not be over looked.
March 24th, 2008 at 9:44 am
I follow your point Andrew, but what if your passion is teaching and learning? Then you are practising your passion. I think too many secondary teachers are well in to their subject, but spend little time on teaching and learning. They are not passionate about this and they should be.
March 24th, 2008 at 10:40 am
Then being in your classroom would be great and Darfield is lucky to have you.
Your comment about secondary teachers is an insightful one.
Most secondary teachers did not go to university to get their degrees to go teaching, where as almost all primary teachers did. Primary teachers identified from the start of their tertiary education the pathway they wanted to follow - one of teaching. In secondary teachers the pathway is not as clear or precise. They go to university to follow their passion, be it science, the arts, business etc. then they follow the line of teaching as a second choice.
My own experiences at teachers college lead me to believe that secondary teachers are not well prepared for teaching. The training they receive lacks the depth and understanding of how and why we teach - essentially pedagogy.
Overseas, the model of secondary teaching reflects more the primary model we have in NZ - teachers enroll in a teaching degree at secondary level which encompasses and includes a specialised degree. Here we would have a great balance - passion for your subject and passion for teaching and learning.
Many secondary teachers are passionate about teaching and learning . But can you look around your staff room and see teachers who are marking time until they retire? whose passion has faded?
March 24th, 2008 at 11:14 am
I hope that by blogging and sharing what I have learnt my classroom practice is more open and reflective. I hope that the children in my class are too.
March 24th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
I would certainly think they would be - we must lead by example. Open, honest and reflective are qualities and values we should encourage and culture. Its not acceptable to expect students to be prepared and organised if the teacher is disorganised and poorly prepared. For them to accept criticism if we are not reflective. We need to walk the walk as well as talk the talk.
Teachers are in some case the most consistent and reliable adult in some of our children’s lives, this particularly applies to primary classrooms where the students will see the teacher for longer each day that their parents.
The impact we, as teachers, have on shaping our students is huge. So the role we project must be the correct one. Students will see through the teacher marking time or who is disinterested. The honesty, passion for learning, enthusiasm, care and energy we invest in our students will be paid back 10 fold.
March 24th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
It’s a burden being a role model of sorts. I loathe wearing a bike helmet but do so every time for fear of being seen without one!
It is scary the impact we can have without realising it sometimes- a parent of an eight year old came to me upset one day in that I had made her daughter have ugly carpet burns on her forehead the week before she was to be flowergirl at a wedding. The reason- she had been home practising her ‘get down low’ to escape the smoke in a burning building!
March 24th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
And this is all the more reason for us to not only model but actually practice the values we try to inspire.
I don’t mean be holier than thou, I don’t think you need to be perfect, Its OK for the students to see you are annoyed, upset or accasionally angry. What is important is how we deal with it.
The fire service would be proud of you!