The+Journey

=Becoming a Teacher=

I view the process of becoming a teaching more than just competing courses and getting a certificate. As such, I feel that the interns are in the beginning stages of the process, even though they have been exposed to teaching for most of their lives. In order to become teachers, interns must recognize that the internship year is a part of the process, not the whole of the process. They still have inductions into their first few years of teaching, finding mentors, experimenting when they have ideas, professional developments, and so on. I do not claim that there is a certain year limit when someone goes from novice to expert, and I am not sure that there are certain qualities that can be categorized to show maturity in teaching.

It is interesting, in TE 402, we discuss how children learn mathematics and may exhibit differing levels of mathematical maturity depending on the content being taught. So, for example, an elementary student may be at the point of knowing facts for addition and subtraction but still need to use manipulatives while working in multiplication. We discuss how teachers can view this as a frustrating situation, why does the student not comprehend the basic facts of multiplication when they understand the basic facts of addition. They are simply at different levels. I view that with the process of becoming a teacher, too. Teachers may show certain skills and abilities in one subject or unit or lesson while in others they seem to lack maturity. I imagine that a critically engaging teacher will continue to think about the processes of teaching throughout the years of teaching.

Some consider this journey as a spectrum, but I feel that this suggests that there are points of demarcation that are passed through by rites of passage. This does not mean that I challenge the ideas that there are induction, novice, and expert teachers, but instead challenge the ideas that there is some point where teacher move their entire corpus into a more mature position.