The noble and equally challenging position of teaching requires passion and high degree of professionalism on the part of individuals dreaming to build it as a life career. I always see teaching as an unconditional obligation a person always carries in his or her mind to take responsibility to the future of students rather than seeing it as a mere profession to eke out one’s living. In other words, a willingness to help the young ones grow and voluntarism are the two essential qualities of a good teacher. Obviously, this requires me to keep aside my personal choices and interests to pursue my dream career of teaching. As I always wanted to become a best teacher, I got enrolled for this program. Since then, I have been practicing socialization with others with the intention of understanding others from their own perspective rather than mine. Besides, taking command over my own feelings, and supporting others both intellectually and emotionally help me to nurture the teacher in me. My current education and experience in the classroom as a developing teacher continue to remind me that teaching alone is all that I ever enjoy doing since helping others grow through imparting responsible education fills my mind with inner peace and joy.
My professional development plan as a teacher starts with preparing my personal development goal. My professional development goal goes like this: “Develop impeccable instructional strategies that motivate young minds and promote problem solving and creative thinking skills.” My action strategies are always influenced by observing the strategies followed by my role model teachers. My flair for reading helps me with a steady supply of knowledge that I transform into new skills through applying appropriately. For instance, students of this generation live in an entirely different world compared to the one I used to know as a student. On the other hand, tomorrow would be much more interesting to me as a teacher through continuously challenging me as a teacher to a still newer generation. I may not be even required to do the same thing I have been doing all these years in the future while trying to mentor my students as a responsible teacher. Acquiring new knowledge by reading and keeping my eyes always open helps me to grow as a professional. Besides, by continuing my journey of reading and learning, I can always reawaken my old self and connect easily with the modern world my students inhabit. Watching videos on personality development and teaching also increases my knowledge level and self confidence.
In light of various challenges awaiting teaching professionals in the coming years that include higher stakes upon the teachers, low retention and reduced funding teachers have to work hard to make teaching joyful (Hall, Quinn, & Gollnick, 2014). Towards gaining wisdom to encounter the future challenges, I have made it a practice to regularly meet with mentors and fellow teachers to plan and collaborate. Seeking feedback both from my students and mentors to sharpen my teaching skills helps me to improve on a continuous basis. Attending periodic in-service trainings, workshops and conferences help me to network with peers and renowned professionals in the field of education. More importantly, I rely on self reflection on a regular basis for the purpose of effecting positive changes in my attitude towards my students and colleagues. I always enjoy maintaining a daily journal in which I note down things as they happen each day. Going through the journal later in quiet moments would give me more inspirations to tackle similar problems in future. As entering daily experience in a journal and reflecting on the journal entries later help in creatively solving day to day issues, I believe I can solve problems pertaining to the attitude and learning abilities of my students in ways that are readily acceptable to them.
As a student enrolled for the program of a preschool teacher, I look forward to understanding the specific needs of each of my children to help them grow into responsible adults. I believe the support of the parents is quite imperative in understanding my students in a better way. I know that for effectively connecting with the kids, I must be able to speak their language apart from becoming conversant with the technologies they are familiar with. I am determined to enrich my knowledge on technology, particularly the internet and a diverse variety of children software that would help me to integrate my knowledge with the technology my students are familiar with. I also see this as a big challenge I would face during my studies. However, I am determined to attend special coaching to supplement my technical knowledge.
The second most challenging thing for me in the future as a preschool teacher would be applying my knowledge and learning experience to effectively differentiate the learning needs of my children and finding appropriate teaching methods so that the needs of everyone are met in the classroom. However, as I am sure that the learning styles of my students are centered around the three basic styles, auditory, visual and kinesthetic, I am prepared to research more on understanding the characteristics of children having different learning styles. Based on my understanding about child psychology, I can clearly see that allowing children to choose activities and games they are interested in would help me in understanding their characteristics and learning abilities.
My concern as a preschool teacher in the future would be effectively teaching cross-curriculum to children having varied learning abilities. More importantly, it requires extraordinary skills and patience on the part of the instructors. For instance blending subjects like science, math and social studies that would make it easier for students to understand the basic concepts would be really challenging. I believe that project based learning would help children to understand problems and make creative and effective solutions to problems they are likely face in real life. Therefore, I plan to specialize in project based learning techniques as well.
Reference
Hall, G.E., Quinn, L.F., & Gollnick, D.M. (2014). Introduction to teaching: making a difference in student learning.Los Angels: Sage Publications.
