Reflectiveness

I belief that it is important for anyone, including the teacher, to have a good understanding of who they are.  Personal reflection is necessary for personal growth and learning in the art of teaching.  People have a knack for whether or not a person is being their true self and students do not respond well when they sense that a teacher has put up barriers between their self and the classroom.  I think teachers and students find it hard to reflect because it is hard to acknowledge one's vulnerable authentic self.  They don't really understand who they are themselves.  There is a lot of fear around who we are and who we feel we should be.  The reflective process can help us determine more about our true authentic selves. Reflection can be done in solitude or in the company of good listeners.  It is important to be honest about feelings with oneself and with others in the reflection process.  This is crucial to being human and being a teacher. 

Passion

I mentioned Mr. Fogarty in a previous post about compassion, but he also had a lot of passion about what he was teaching.  He taught English and humanities and also coached the speech team that I became apart of.  He got me really excited about writing and influenced me to join the speech team Junior year.  I think Mr. Fogarty's passion was really evident in his dedication to teaching and his love of language.

I also had some teachers that were really apathetic about their subject, or at least it seemed that way. My eighth grade science teacher would have his head on his desk and his eyes closed for much of the class period each day.  This may have been a lack of passion about teaching in general and about the subject.  This may have something to do with my apathy for science today.

Authenticity

Authenticity is of the utmost importance to me in teaching and in simply being human.  I am always trying to be my fully authentic self.  In teaching one must be an authentic teacher.  As an authentic music teacher, i teach music, but i also show and teach how to love music and love making it.  Students are generally pretty intuitive about whether or not a teacher is authentic.  Inauthentic teachers, besides not being in the profession they should be in, are not engaging for students.  This also ties back to the respect issue.  Students respect authenticity, and it inspires them to learn.  Being authentic lets your self come through the teaching and students are not just learning, but they become inspired.

Compassion

My junior year of high school i took two classes A.P. English Composition and Humanities from a teacher in my school named Mr. Fogarty.  I learned a lot of from observing him teach.  One of the things i really grew to respect him for, was how he would inspire the class to have compassion on others.  He would show this by being kind every day in class and around school, but he would also inform his classes about humanitarian issues around the world and he inspired compassion in myself on people in poverty.  This has made an impact on the teacher that i want to be.  I want to educate students in my area of expertise, but i also want to inspire compassion in students and help them to grow emotionally and spiritually.

Respect

Respect is an interesting term and can certainly mean different things to different people.  I tend to associate respect with admiration of a certain quality within a person.  I have respect for my brother because he, among other reasons, is a very knowledgeable scholar in theology and has taught me a lot. Also, I have a lot of respect for my mother, because she tries to love any person she comes into contact with.  I have respect for both people because i admire and value the qualities within them and i desire to have these attributes within myself.  Within the classroom a more traditional style teacher might hold the belief that in order to maintain respect in the class room, one must be strict, firm, and stoic.  To a certain extent, i think these are valuable traits of a teacher, but the ideal is to get students to be excited about learning and the role of the teacher is to encourage and guide which might entail being strict sometimes.  High school kids can be vicious.  In high school choir, my choir director could simply not keep control or respect of the classroom.  The sopranos would be gossiping, the altos complaining, and the tenors and basses chucking wads of paper across the room at each other all while the director would be trying to conduct rehearsal.  The director would start to get emotional and angry and the more emotional she got, the rowdier the students would get.  Its a scary thing about human nature; people take pleasure in watching some one they dislike, suffer.  The important thing as a teacher in the classroom, is to win the hearts of the students.  I think this is best done by being competent in what you are teaching, showing an excitement about what you are teaching, and charisma and kindness.  Respect must be established from the beginning and it must be obvious, in the choir setting, that the students are there to sing and learn about music and not an hour of whatever mischief they can think of.  I think this should be established verbally, as well as in nonverbals and how you present yourself.  Respect is the most basic key to having a successful class and for students to learn.  If students don't respect you, if they don't admire any qualities within you, then they don't want to hear what you have to say.