The power and influence that a teacher can have on a student’s life is extraordinary. This unique position of authority provides them with an opportunity to make a positive impact on their students and potentially change their life entirely. It is essential that teachers show genuine interest in getting to know each and every student, this allows for a better understanding of all students on a deeper level. We must then strive to build positive, supportive, respectful and caring relationships with every individual in our classroom, while rejecting all pre-determined judgments and differences among them. We must also work everyday to create a positive, caring, supportive, safe, equal, and fun environment that surrounds our students both in the classroom and within the school itself. By immersing students in this atmosphere, we are providing them with opportunities to reach their full potential, both academically and personally. As future educators, we are major role models in our students’ lives, we are the individuals who play a significant role in shaping their development, and we are essentially the ones developing the next generation of our society; Therefore, we must realize the significance of our role and seize every opportunity to foster these principles that will encourage positive change in our students’ lives.

Recently, I had a professor at UVIC in a Ceramics course that changed my life. She has a very kind-hearted and peaceful nature, an immense passion for art, she is patient, optimistic, encouraging, and has genuine interest in every student and their work. She inspired me to create art in a whole new light and it was refreshing to experience her approach to teaching. She is an admirable teacher who guiding me to discover a passion of mine that I will hold forever and inspired me to one day make positive transformations in my students’ lives.

This is a short video displaying the significance of a teachers’ role and the influence they have on their students. It is specific to Christian Education, but nevertheless displays the influence of a teacher on their students. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WICmyjGJOQ

As a future educator, I have the opportunity to be one of the most influential individuals in a child’s life. I am a constant role model that will work to inspire and encourage my students to see every bit of good in themselves and strive to live to their full potential. I will live a life of integrity and work to be the best role model for my students; someone that they admire and aspire to be like. When I look back on my experiences with influential teachers, I realize that what I have learnt most from them was not necessarily detailed on a syllabus, but rather in their personalities and character. This gives me all the more reason to ensure that I act ethically and honestly at all times for my students, parents, and fellow employees. Having a concrete ethical stance involves ensuring respect and equality for all, doing no harm (physically, emotionally or mentally), being caring and compassionate, displaying integrity and honesty, and creating relationships that foster mutual trust. I believe that my students need to be surrounded by these positive qualities in order to influence their personal development and their development of healthy relationships in all aspects of life.

Looking back on experiences in High School, I remember teachers who would always assume the negative of a situation or of their students. As a student in this situation, I would immediately feel discouraged, defensive and as though my teacher did not trust me. I believe that when a teacher does not display these honest and ethical qualities in the classroom, any chance of attaining a mutually trusting and respectful relationship with their students are broken.

Understanding and knowing the diversity of your students and the classroom dynamics is extremely important to do at the beginning of the year. This provides many benefits, such as, promoting positive relationship development in the class, increasing lesson plan success, enabling the teacher to better handle situations with students, and creating a classroom community environment. By taking the time to know and understand my students, I will be better equipped to focus my teaching to individuals’ specific needs. I will do this by taking that knowledge and utilizing it when developing my lesson plans to make the activities and lectures specific to the diversity of my students and the classroom dynamics. This will hopefully maximize student engagement, development and overall success. I will also make assessment and tracking student growth and development a major priority in my classroom. In doing so, I ensure that my students are understanding and learning the material, curriculum requirements are being met, and students are provided with feedback on their development and progress, which can in turn act as a motivator.  

Looking back on personal experiences, I was much more engaged and motivated when I felt that my teachers truly cared about getting to know everyone in the classroom and making sure their students were learning and understanding the material. It was much more helpful having teachers who put in the time to adapt their lessons to provide students the time and support necessary to fully understand the material. This was done through providing us with a variety of methods to learn and understand the material, as well as checking in with us about our progress and thought process about the material.

The collaborative support from the community, parents, and families is ideal for student success both academically and personally. As an educator, I understand and respect the role that these support systems play in my students’ lives.

On a larger scale, the support from the community as a whole is significant in a variety of ways: it provides students with a sense of being, value and acceptance; it provides students with opportunities to be involved and make positive impacts in their community; it provides students with additional resources, such as gymnasiums, weight rooms, parks and recreation, and volunteer opportunities; and finally, the community/cross-community support and involvement allows students to gain multiple perspectives on different cultures and insights on the dynamics in other communities.

On a more personal level, research has shown that parent and family engagement was rated one of the top five essential support systems for lasting school improvement and success (http://www.sedl.org/afterschool/iqa/events/archive/2013-spring-conference/Roles_Engagement_Student_Success.pdf). This makes it especially important for me to implement strategies and solutions to enhance parent/family involvement in my students’ High School career. I must make parent involvement a priority in my teaching philosophy, recognize and remove the barriers to parent involvement, share the decision-making power with parents and community members, and work to fully understand my class and their cultural differences (http://www.pta.org/programs/content.cfm?ItemNumber=1459). Some strategies and solutions I can implement include: planning family nights at the school, family-teacher conferences, family workshops to help plan for college/university, asking for parent help (ie. For events, assisting in the classroom, field trips etc.), keep open communication with parents, teaching/guiding parents on how to help/support their child etc.

Looking back on my personal experiences, my High School did not seem to make parent and community support and involvement a priority. We used some community resources, however, we were not provided opportunities to become involved in the community and receive that support that would benefit us in so many ways. As for parent involvement, teacher-parent conferences were provided as an option rather than a requirement. After researching the positive impacts that these two support systems can have, I feel that they could have put more effort in this department and been more creative in developing new strategies to implement.

As a new teacher, planning is essential to the success of my lessons and ultimately, my student growth and achievement as well. Through thoughtful planning I will be able to find a wider variety of more creative activities and instructional strategies to implement in my lessons. By putting the extra effort into planning and organizing my lessons, student engagement will be maximized, transitions and time management will be optimal, and the lesson will run more smooth as I will be prepared and organized. Planning and organizing my lessons will in turn allow for optimal instruction and delivery of the content. Teachers who fail to see the importance of planning, do not put in the extra effort or step outside of the box when it comes to finding new and fresh activities are seriously depriving their students of receiving the best possible education that they deserve.

Along with planning and implementation, effective assessment and evaluation practices are also critical components of what it means to be a good teacher. It has been proven that giving feedback, in the proper manner, had significant positive affects for students. Given this, it is even more important that we not only thoughtfully plan our lessons, but our assessment and evaluation strategies as well. I think it is extremely important to break away from the traditional summative assessment techniques of simply ranking students based on test scores, to that of a formative approach. I will plan my assessment and evaluation with a purpose in mind, so that it is able to support and improve my students’ learning and understanding of the material; I will focus on assessment for learning, assessment of learning, and assessment as learning to ensure this. Implementing formative assessment practices and providing student with effective feedback will be major priorities in my teaching approach.

Looking back to past courses that raised the question ‘what characteristics describe the ideal teacher?’ one answer seems most prominent: passionate. A passionate teacher is not only one who loves going to their job everyday but is one that is passionate about the subject that they teach. Being passionate about the subject matter sets a solid foundation for the success of instruction when teaching students. Having a broad knowledge base and understanding of my subject areas will not only increase my credibility, but also build my confidence and ability to share this knowledge with my students. Through my personal experiences, teachers who displayed confidence and knowledge during instruction held my attention and increased my motivation to learn the material much more than a teacher who did not seem passionate or knowledgeable. When a teacher is able to reach their students in this way, it not only enhances student success in the class, but it drives them to find and pursue something that inspires them in the same way.

A successful teacher is also one who is able to share their knowledge and teach their students the material in a clear manner that makes it easier for students to learn and understand. In order to do so, teachers must first have an understanding of the curricular, conceptual and methodological foundations of education and of their subject areas. They must also have knowledge of their students and their progress through the material in order to promote student growth and success. Therefore, I must check for student understanding throughout instruction and be able to adapt my lesson to match the progress of my students when necessary. Making sure that my students know that I care about their progress is very important to me, as I feel that it will prove my support and it will help my relationships grow with each and every one of them.

I think a teacher should always being open to new ideas and perspectives. By having an open mind, I will be given more opportunities to try new approaches or methods that may end up being very successful in my classroom. An effective teacher also stays current with the research and news in their subject area. By keeping up with the latest news and research, locally and globally, I will be able to incorporate current issues and fascinating information into the classroom. I believe in doing so, it makes the course content more relatable for my students. Along with keeping current, I will also take the time to implement Canadian, Aboriginal and Global contexts into my classroom. By taking the time in my planning to incorporate Canadian and Aboriginal contexts in my lesson plans, I will allow my students to build a stronger foundation of knowledge of their country’s history, culture, and ways of life. I will especially take the time to integrate global contexts in my lessons as I feel this will create a more rich and inclusive environment in the classroom. I also feel that incorporating this global context will promote and enhance the development of well-rounded individuals. I can achieve this by introducing a variety of new cultures, perspectives, backgrounds and ways of life into my lesson plans and classroom environment.

Life itself is about maturing and growing into the best possible version of yourselfand I believe, as we each coast through this journey, we realize and appreciate the significance of this integral part of life more and more. Appreciating and nurturing this process in my daily life and transferring this process into my career as a teacher, will not only help me grow into a better person but a better educator as well.  I believe that this life and career long learning involves appreciating and being open to new perspectives and insights from the wide variety of individuals that we cross paths with. It involves learning from all of our experiences in life and taking the positive from them. Doing this is what forms the basis of who you are: your values and morals, your beliefs, and your outlook on life in general.

As a teacher, I am not only guiding my students on their journey of learning, but I am also guiding myself through my own personal journey of learning as well. As a teacher who is committed to engaging in career long learning, I plan to always be willing to keep an open mind with teaching techniques and ideas; I plan to put the time and effort into keeping up with the latest research in my field of work; I plan to always take the time to reflect on myself, my teaching philosophy and behaviors; and I plan to take the time to gain student insights and reflect the effectiveness of my lessons. In doing so, I will not only be benefitting myself by gaining more insight and understanding, but my students and fellow colleges as a result.

I have been given the amazing opportunity to gain my Bachelors of Education degree at the University of Victoria. The structure of this program and the courses that I have taken, have allowed me to value the importance of this reflection process and the idea that learning is a life-long process.

I believe that one of the greatest contributions that an Educator can make to their profession is to not only to share their knowledge and expertise with fellow educators but also to support and mentor the next generation of teachers coming into the profession. If all teachers in this profession connected with one another and passed on their expertise and experiences, our schools would soon be filled with nothing but exceptional teachers that use successful and effective techniques in their classrooms. Given the advancement in technology over the past decade, our approach to Education is in need of a serious shift in order to keep up with our society, and our students for that matter. For this reason, the sharing of knowledge and expertise between educators is especially important for finding effective techniques that incorporate technology so we are better able to relate to our students. In recent classes, we have had presentations from fellow students who are currently in their practicum that have opened my eyes to the importance using technology in the classroom, as well as, the importance of sharing knowledge to peers. I feel like I have taken a lot away from their experiences; they have sparked my interest with using techniques such as Remind 101; I think this is an effective use of technology that I definitely plan to incorporate into my classrooms in the future. Given this need for change due to advances in technology, as well as, the strong need for a transformation in our Education System in general, contributing to the teaching profession in any way possible is the key to sparking this crucial revolution of our Education System.

Seeking this knowledge from fellow educators, passing on my own knowledge and supporting future teachers, will not only benefit myself by becoming the best possible teacher that I can be, but I will be greatly benefitting my students as a result. Providing new and exciting teaching techniques, as well as the best possible instruction to my students will promote the development of happy, healthy and knowledgeable individuals into our society.