Since September there are a several ways that I have grown as an emerging teacher and there are a lot of ways that my initial values surrounding teaching have grown and expanded. First and foremost, I have thoroughly explored and reflected on the way in which my awareness of my worldview has been heightened.

From the first week of this program, we have been encouraged to evaluate our worldview as it relates to who we are as a person and who we are as educators. In our first cross curricular class we were asked to reflect on our worldview and what privileges we have and this was eye opening for me. I have thought about how lucky I have been throughout to come from a very tight-knit family of primarily teachers who have allowed me to have a very good private education and stable upbringing, but I had never really reflected on how this effects how I view the world and the way that I have thought about being a teacher. This thinking lead me into several discussions with my peers about what type of school I would like to teach in and in what type of school community I would feel most comfortable in. In September, I would have told anyone that I would prefer to be in a private school, particularly one that teaches the IB curriculum because that is what I was familiar with. During our first Reynolds school visit, we were asked to think about in what ways high school is the same and different than when we were at high school. I had never gone to a public high school so for me there were a lot of firsts and I was both excited and overwhelmed by the experience of having so many students in one building and being surrounded by an overall different ethos. However, it hasn’t taken me long to feel very comfortable at Reynolds and in fact when I visited my old school I was very taken aback at how uncomfortable I felt in a familiar setting. Going to that school from the age of 6 I had never thought much about my school culture or the school composition but when I returned I was overwhelmed with the wealth, material goods and the business like atmosphere. While I was certainly lucky to attend a great school with wonderful teachers, it is not an environment that I think that I would like to work in the near future.

There is so much to be learnt from students with various backgrounds and abilities and as I have been really trying to push myself beyond my comfort zone and learn from those around me, I would love the opportunity to work in a school with a diverse group of learners. The private school I went to had very, very few students with IEPs and 100% of students from my grad class went to university. This created a very distinct culture in the school and my education provided me with a single way of preparing for life after high school. In order to really embrace a growth mindset at this point in my educational journey, I would like to explore other schools, more diverse classrooms and different approaches to preparing students for the future.

Building towards a growth mindset, I have been focusing on my ability to receive and process feedback from my peers, colleagues, professors and mentors. I have a very difficult time taking criticism and feedback as constructive and not personal and this is something that I am very aware that I will need to work on in order to be successful in my practicum and in my teaching career. I am very grateful for the opportunity to give and receive feedback and I think it is slowly getting easier to hear. As this is a career that I have been working towards my entire life and am so passionate about I have constantly reminding myself that the only way to be a great teacher is to learn from the knowledge and experience of others and that I am only beginning in this journey. I am also grateful for the opportunities for teaching and observation that this program offers as it provides lots of opportunities to practice skills, receive feedback and integrate that feedback into our practice right away. Additionally, being able to express my concern about receiving feedback from my peers has allowed me to gain new skills and techniques to help me in this area, as well as for peers to encourage me to ask for feedback instead of just waiting for it. Learning certainly takes patience and time and learning to become an effective teacher is a lifelong journey that can be enhanced with feedback from others.

Building upon this, the opportunity to make close connections with my classmates and to meet several teachers at Reynolds and beyond has helped to build my confidence in asking for help and advice. This has allowed me to start building positive and supportive learning networks. Other teachers are an amazing source of knowledge and I am learning that many teachers are excited and willing to answer questions about teaching different subjects, ages and students. I feel that there is such a huge responsibility put on teachers to be positive role models, effective educators and to make connections with students but while this feels at times to be daunting, it is made easier by having a positive support network who all want the best for their students. This is certainly a huge task but it is also a great honour to be able to be a role model, an educator and a person that students can trust, and a task that we will be supported in with the networks we create.

There are also elements of my teaching identity that I have held since September that have been illuminated and enhanced through my experiences thus far. Before I started this program, my dad gave me the advice, always remember that first and foremost you are teaching students. He said that every teacher will teach different subject areas, in his case music and social studies in mine, but the subject matter is secondary to the students. While I struck by the importance of this statement, it didn’t become clear until I began to talk to students and teachers at Reynolds and Rockheights. Every student is coming in to the classroom with different experiences, interests and abilities and if we were to focus on the content it would be impossible to make meaningful connections with our students, and make learning relevant and interesting to them. The new curriculum further exemplifies this way of thinking as it places importance on the skills students gain (through the core and curricular competencies) as opposed to the specific content. In this way educators are putting their student’s personal growth, ahead of their own interest in a subject area.