The making of a profession

9 Responses to The making of a profession

1. Mark Surzyshyn

   May 22, 2018 at 08:05

   In high school, I was definitely one of “those kids”. I liked my teachers, but I did not respect them (I did not respect anyone for that matter), and it took me until the end of grade 12 to really start to realize what it was they were trying to impart to me. I had one teacher in particular that I really gravitated to, and he was certainly my inspiration for wanting to get into the profession, but it’s been 30 years now and the actual reasons are somewhat foggy. However, what is not foggy is the fact that he taught and I listened, even though I was to obstinate to let him know that. I was immature and mentally underdeveloped, and for those reasons I treated life as a kind of “last man standing” contest where you show no emotion, offer no thanks, and remain stoic as humanly possible – for what reason I cannot recall. The bottom line is that I truly did like and respect this teacher because he never gave up on me, even when I was at my worst. When I see students like me, I realize I have to be equally relentless as there may be no second chance for them, and I try to teach as if I am there last and only line of defence. He never took offence, nor do I, so resilience in life is the determining factor (even when the motivations are a bit illogical). Thank you Mr. Kraemer, you did your job, and did it well. This will be what I give back.

   Reply
2. Brianna Ball

   June 4, 2018 at 11:01

   My motivation to become a teacher stems from my own love of learning. I think education has tremendous value, both from an individual and from a societal standpoint. From a personal perspective, I believe education allows us to engage with the world around us in more interesting and complex ways. From a societal perspective, I believe education has the power to make the world a better place. Case studies have demonstrated that better education can have enormous impacts on combatting global poverty. Additionally, I want to live in a society full of individuals which are better equipped to think critically, solve problems, and express empathy and compassion. I want to be a teacher because I want to contribute to this process, even if just in some small way. I also think that teaching is undervalued as a profession. The reasons for this are complex and varied but ultimately teachers are not given the credit they deserve. I believe good teaching requires a great deal of knowledge, both in content and in pedagogy. While it may be possible for a strong student to learn content one night and teach that same content to others the next morning, there is no way that person will be able to teach with the same richness and complexity as a content expert. I think the best teachers are the ones that love the subject they teach and have studied it passionately. I believe students can sense that passion. If it is missing, the students may wonder what the value is in studying this content. I also believe that the best teachers have a good understanding of pedagogy and best practice but I think content knowledge is crucial. This isn’t to say that non-experts cannot teach well but I think that expert understanding can only make a teacher better.

   Reply
3. Danny Campbell

   June 4, 2018 at 11:16

   I want to become a teacher because teachers make an impact on their students and on the world. Schools are the transitional space between “the home” and “the real world” a space which helps define who people are and what they are going to become. The school is the first real place where we as children encounter both peers and authority figures who aren’t family, who have no obligation to us. It is our first chance to test ourselves in real socials circles. The importance of the role of the teacher is such a space cannot be overlooked.
   For me as a student it was middle school that was the first big social culture shock. Middle school was a nightmare. My middle school was quite large and was fed by five elementary schools and the schools itself was split into 3 different pods. I happened to be split up from my friends and placed into a pod with very few people I knew from elementary school. I was Isolated from my friends and bullied for my first two years of middle school. I became angry, my grades dropped and I hated school.
   This all changed in my grade 9 year. There was a new teacher in the school teaching a theatre class. That teacher saw potential in me and took me under her wing. She created a strong community in her theatre class and forged some strong friendships; I had a place that I finally belonged in the school and the confidence that I could fit in socially. A teacher did that. If I hadn’t had that one teacher who know where I would be now, but something tells me it wouldn’t be 2 months away from becoming a teacher myself.

   Reply
4. Rosey Sharma

   June 4, 2018 at 13:26

   My journey to become a teacher started from my desire to be a school counsellor.  Working with children, youth and families, I began to see how much of an impact the school environment could play in the daily lives of students.  As a counsellor I would constantly be collaborating with schools, teachers, support staff to ensure the success of students in their counselling and school.  When I moved to BC, I decided to pursue becoming a school counsellor and in order to do this I needed my Bachelor of Education.  This led me to wanting to become a teacher.  During my practicum, my experience as a teacher has motivated me to continue to teach so I could understand the barriers teachers face in dealing with mental health issues in the classroom.  These experiences inspired me to continue to be a teacher because I can see the opportunity teachers have to address mental health in their classrooms. Teachers play a large role in the lives of students and for some students the teacher may be the only adult support in their lives. Students need to have at least one adult in their life that believes in them and teachers may be able to be that person. My desire to be a counsellor is to support students to be able to address issues that they may be dealing with and as a teacher I have seen the possibility to do this in the classroom, possibly more effectively than meeting with a counsellor once every week or couple of weeks. However, as a teacher I have also learned that there are so many responsibilities to carry, including lesson planning, marking, extra-curricular activities. Now I have the opportunity to become a teacher and explore the barriers in supporting children with mental health issues and how to overcome them. After gaining this experience, I would like to continue my career as a counsellor so I can find ways to support teachers in developing supportive relationships with students while balancing their many responsibilities.

   Reply
   • Ashenafi Alemu Aboye

     June 10, 2018 at 23:43

     Wonderful post but slightly astray from the topic. I am glad that you mentioned the idea of mental health. I feel that the idea of mental health is almost always forgotten from discussions in education. We teach in the class but we usually do not consider students spiritual well-being and their mental health. I feel that teachers and professors rarely remember this variable- the notion of depression, stress, student mental wellbeing is often less directly addressed. And as it is not physically noticeable, it is less understood, less considered, less prioritized and far less treated than it ought to be. It hurts. I think as part of our discussions about knowledge and pedagogy, and teacher’s knowledge, we should also consider how we would be able to know whether students are in a satisfactory condition in terms of mental health, and how to make room for flexibility to accommodate this issue.

     Reply
5. Sam Dodd

   June 4, 2018 at 19:08

   It can be a difficult thing to delineate a philosophy on a subject I’ve only just started examining from the perspective of an educator and not, as it were, of a student. Like the writer who holds several severe, strong opinions on writing but has yet to publish a novel, my ideas are informed by hypotheticals and the things I’ve read; less and less the things of make-believe, though initially this was an invented profession for me, in that I knew only of it what I’d conceived internally and from personally-held biases. As experiences shape my perception these biases will either become cemented in my philosophy or cast out the door as baloney.
   Conceivably then it’s better to ask what some of my essential ideas are where education is concerned today. I believe it begins with that vague adjective we often use to ascribe blamelessness to something or someone: it is hereditary. My great-grandfather was a teacher and school principal who graded his papers in green oak gall ink; his daughter—my grandmother—spearheaded as a teacher herself a literacy movement in a small Ontario town that has changed its fortunes; and my mother was a teacher too, a volatile but rapaciously intelligent woman who modeled for me, along with the others, the virtues and the dignity of the profession. I aspired to this dignity, to this sense of responsibility. For a long time I could not have said why, save for an abiding sense that I wasn’t doing enough for the outside world; in essence, my credo is the extension of that rudimentary sentiment: that the continued success of any community is contingent on its teachers, who will shine a light on something we haven’t yet arrived at, but that, its capacities and routes at last intimated to us, we hanker to explore further on our own.

   Reply
   • Ashenafi Alemu Aboye

     June 10, 2018 at 23:49

     Your statements are also inspirational. I strongly agree with the notion that “….the continued success of any community is contingent on its teachers, who will shine a light on something we haven’t yet arrived at…”

     Reply
6. Lyle Hopkins

   June 4, 2018 at 21:45

   I’m interested in the teaching profession for a variety of reasons. Some of these reasons are lofty, others are more practical. I think my first inkling for wanting to pursue teaching as a career was while I attended high school. Thinking back, the most significant part of high school for me wasn’t curricular based, but instead it was the relationships and the positive impact that some of my teachers had on me. I guess some of these teacher-student relationships may have left me wanting to be involved in the process from the otherside.

   In addition to this romantic idea of education, I also view the profession as a secure and sustainable career path for myself. As an artist, the notion of dependable income, medical benefits, and union membership certainly sounds appealing. Furthermore, the autonomy that the profession allows and the socialist slant of public education sit well with my personal disposition. At the very least, a job that emphasizes mental work over physical labour seems pretty good, right? (Says the guy who will probably be hauling around band room instruments for the rest of his life)

   Reply
   • Ashenafi Alemu Aboye

     June 10, 2018 at 19:45

     Teachers significantly influence their students in many ways. My grade eight English teacher inspired me to pursue this career path. I eventually made it a lifetime investment to be a teacher. Achieving this dream required me to invest a lot and remain a student until today. It is interesting to read how teaching as a career will also help you become who you want to be- an artist. Reading your post again, I just remembered our guest speaker Dr. Sam Rocha who is a professor of Philosophy of Education. He also plays guitar at the Wolf and Hound. You may like to connect with like-minded people and share their experiences of being an artist-educator.

     Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.