Reflection 9

I appreciate what our last two speakers at seminar have shared with us.

The man from last week was insightful as far as he gave me a future employer's point of view. I learned that the best ways I can show how good of a teacher I am to principals in my first initial interviews is through my relationships with those who are there to teach me and guide me. Now, those relationships are positively and negatively affected by two things: normal relationship dynamics (friendliness, mutual respect, sincerity, etc.) and my ability to learn and improve in my teaching. This means that I need to form good relationships with my professors and my student teaching mentor as well as work hard to progress and improve in my teaching.

Another thing he touched on which is also what was most impactful from today's speaker was the idea of love for the students. Both speakers advised very bluntly and adamantly that nobody should go into teaching if (s)he doesn't love it and love the students. Last week we heard that if we didn't hate the job but didn't love the students, then "the students would make sure we hated the job." This week we heard that we already have too many teachers that didn't even like kids, and yet they were still teaching. This reminds me of what Braden said to me about teachers complaining about their wages, "You mean you didn't know about that before you got into the job? Why would you ever jump into a career when you had no idea what you were going to be doing?"
"Change your major today if you don't think you'll like working with students!" I can see how this advice could be discouraging to someone people. Obviously this major does a lot more than prepare you to teach, but nonetheless, it's important to think about if you were planning to teach, but also knew you weren't going to enjoy the actual teaching part. Luckily for me, I know I'm in the right place and that advice is more encouraging to me than discouraging.