To teach a subject you must understand that subject and be comfortable with it. To be able to teach the subject you must understand yourself. That understanding will give you confidence which the students will pick up on and respond to. They will see you as an authority and seek out your guidance and opinion.
Edward,
Confidence comes from within, that inner feeling "I know my stuff". This is related to competence, which in some ways is a perception exhibited by students. Even in our weak areas, with competence and confidence, the student perception will be that of "I can learn something from this person".
Barry Westling
I know when I was a student I would push myself to go to certain classes because some instructors were serious all the time. When I became an instructor I wanted to make sure not only are the students learning but they would enjoy coming to class and enjoy the learning experience.
You need to understand youself as a instructor to be able to help your students. It is important to know your instruction style as well as what your weakness is.
Yvette,
Great! I think pondering how students perceive us and how we are presenting our lessons gives us insight into something about ourselves. It's worth taking time periodically to reflect on the class from the students perspective.
Barry Westling
Qiana,
We all have weaker areas that can use improvement. But these shouldn't interfere with our effectiveness as teachers (unless we let them). I believe confronting areas we feel need improvemnt is an ongoing process, and we become stronger because it.
Barry Westling
I personally think its important because it helps you understand your weakness and improve as a instructor and an individual. For example, my strong trait is organization, I'm always prepared for classes and the structure of the class, however, my weakness is being a strong speaker. Therefore the classroom environments allows me to practice and work on these weakness which therefore help me as individual in other areas of my life.
Kelly,
Great. I really don't think anyone expects everyone to be exemplary in every component of teaching. I think a lot of what we do is a "work in progress", and as long as we stay open and willing to improve we should achieve continued student successes and our weaker areas will become less significant or apparent.
Barry Westling
I think self-assessment and understanding is a prerequisite that differentiates a great instructor from a medicore one. Having content knowledge and experience is certainly an ingredient to success, but without the "well-rounded package" of knowing how our beliefs, values, personality, and style influence leanring - it would simply be a product of luck to create a perfect learning environment.
Instructors are human and thus prone to mistakes and a plethora of opportunities to reflect and improve to achieve a greater outcome. By understanding ourselves and our individual strengths and weaknesses, we can better forge an improvement plan to develop ourselves as coaches, mentors, and facilitators that can show students by example how to achieve academic greatness.
Samuel,
Good. Its a fact, we all have strengths and weaker areas, both in personlity and teaching effectiveness. It's natural to gravitate to what feels the best or what we're good at, whether that's in the best interest of the student or not, or the best way to teach a class. So, first "knowing where we shine, and where there's room to realign" identify where improvement is needed. Second, having the willingness and openess to modify or adjust our ways through self awareness is the action that creates the opportunity for improvement. I think there's no end-point to this process either, it's kind of a life-long "work in progress".
Barry Westling
Understanding yourself is important not only as an instructional leader but as a person in general. It is important to know your temperament and your speaking ability along with any mannerisms and body language. Mannerisms and body language can be distracting to learners of any age but extremely distracting to adult learners especially. They will pick up on body language more so than younger learners. As an adult learner myself I was distracted by many of my professors mannerisms and body language.
Lisa,
In settings where the teachers don't care about their students success because "they get paid whether the student learns or not, or is even there or not" there is little incentive other than personal integrity and responsibility to want to help students learn. Most teachers in career schools would not last long with this mentality. The student (as a paying customer) is our chief concern, and their successfulness ofen tied to our continued employment. So although that should not be the motivation, it is a factor. As teachers, we should have a passion for what we teach, deliver it with enthusiasm, provide it in an upbeat manner, and use variety in resources to make classes interesting and enjoyable. If we show we care, and are genuine and approachable, students will often overlook other minor personality or mannerisms, if the students feel we are sincerely concerned for their successfulness.
Barry Westling
It's important to understand myself as an instructional leader, because it helps with knowing what strengths and weaknesses I possess as an instructor. By know what I am capable of as an instructor it allows be to work on showing this in the class, where is with my limitations, I can stay away from trying to incorporate them as much so that I can improve on them and implement at a later time.
Donte,
Good. I think a teacher can work on weaker areas as sort of a "work in progress" during class sessions. Depending on the weakness, practice in improving in small doses creates the trial and error opportunity in class. Sometimes what is perceived as "a weakness" is magnified in the teachers mind, and by simple intoduction a little at a time, the teacher will find that improvement is possible. Thus, a weakness becomes a strength, and growth will have occured.
Barry Westling
Having an understanding of yourself as an instructional leader allows you to critically reflect on your teaching practice to continually improve your efforts as a teacher, a life-long learner, and as an integral part of the institution in which you work.
Adult learning author and seminal teacher education theorist, Brookfield, (1995) offers a “good practice audit†as a means for teachers to perpetually self reflect and to solve specific instructions dilemmas through self-exploration. While academic literature is a vital and necessary resource for exploring dilemmas, Brookfield asserts that instructors too often exclude their own experience as a viable resource. A good practice audit attempts to offer teachers a means to examine their experiences in solving dilemmas, which will build a teacher’s ability to work and grow in their educational environment. He advises journaling (or at least thinking) about the following regularly to improve practice and in specific difficult dilemmas:
Worst Experience as a Learner
Worst Experience as a Colleague
Worst Experience as a Teacher
Best Experience as Learner
Best Experience as a Colleague
Best Experience as a Teacher
Practice to Meet the Critical Dilemma
Environmental Supports
Challenges
Final Reflections and Continued Questions
This good practice audit is a way to use experience to improve our teaching skills. With rich and thick descriptions of experience, this contemplation produces themes that bring tangible tools to facilitate practice and to continue exploration, which will ultimately help our students grown in content knowledge and in life-long learning.
- Dr. Rockford Sansom
References
Brookfield, S.D. (1995). Becoming a critically reflective teacher. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
I've been in teaching profession more than 25 years. Most of my experience come from 4-year colleges and high schools. The college I work with now is a vocational one. We deal with students who paid for obtaining a new profession. To me that means that some of my experience is not going to work. I started my first day attending classes where my colleagues teach to learn the differences in methods and possible teaching approaches to make my own efforts more effectictive
Rockford,
Great fooder for getting teachers to diminish their influence on students independent thinking. In career courses there is theory that must be mastered. But increasingly, students (and graduates) are being held to a standard with crical thinkings expectations. To facilitate effective independent thought, we got's-ta get outta da way".
Barry Westling
Eduard,
Career school education is different from other educational settings, not better or worse, just different. If you have experienced career school teachers sharing what they know, what works better, sort of showing the ropes, I think that's terric. A good teacher is always open and willing to learn new things, ways, methods, and receive input from others leading to personal self improvement.
Barry Westling
By understanding myself as an instructional leader I am able to continue to improve my delivery with confidence and conviction. This is my first year back in the classroom and I am comfortable being animated and talking, however by knowing myself and my strengths and weaknesses I am able to evaluate myself and know that to be a better leader I can improve on slowing down my delivery and BE the expert and give the students value for their time in my class.
Mark,
As teachers, we all have various abilities and stronger traits that make us useful to our employers and students. Naturally, personality will always be a factor. What we all have is the capabilty to be approachable, prepared, and willing to put in the time, effort and planning required for effective instrution. Also a willingness to be open to continued improvement will target weaker areas that we want to see strengthened.
Barry Westling
