Efficacy

Self-awareness, confidence, persistence, work ethic, and belief in one's ability is definitely connected to becoming a highly effective teacher. Self-awareness makes you go about your day in a very conscientious way. This is good because teachers are always held to a higher standard, and are always being watch from one angle or another. Being aware of what you do and say really does affect how you influence your students and peers. Confidence must be shown at all times when in the classroom. Many students, in the older classrooms, love to find any weakness a teacher may show to disrupt the class for their enjoyment. If a teacher stays strong and is in charge of his or her class daily the confidence will not be questioned or tested. Persistence is key to teaching. What would a teacher be without it? Without persistence a teacher would just give up helping a struggling student, or quit trying new and effective things in the classroom. What also is a part of being persistent is one's work ethic. One must have a schedule and keep pushing themselves to new and better things for the class. If you do not hold yourself to a higher standard how can you ask others to do the same? All of these things previously stated are important but none of these things will work out if you do not believe in your ability to teach.

Inventiveness

Is creativity an important skill for the 21st century? I feel that we should encourage our students and children to think outside the box every single day! As the years go on they will have to deal with much more than we ever had to, and this will require many different types of thinking and many more new and fresh ideas. Many forget to encourage creativity. We should always encourage it, teach it, and reward it. Ways to bring about creativity in a classroom setting is just to have many different activities or many different ways of going about a certain thing. You can also challenge the students to come up with even more ideas for that certain topic to expand even more.

Reflectiveness

It has been said that many teachers and students when asked to, find it hard to reflect upon many things. After doing a whole reflective paper on our own learning experiences through the years, even though the previous statement seems bizarre, I would have to agree. When looking back to the early years in school for many, they may remember the people, school plays, school parties, but when asked to think about previous teachers teaching styles many are stumped. When I reflect upon elementary school years, I just remember many creative activities that were done during class time. Then moving into middle school, I for the most part remember classes that interested me and many extra curricular activities I participated in to find my calling. It really was not until high school that I remember specific teaching styles. For example, the "laid back" teacher that showed many movies, power-points, and had more busy work than anything else or the "strict" teacher that gave long meaningful projects where students really had no choice but to understand the material. Some find that reflection is the heart of the teaching process. This is true, because teachers have to try out many things within their classroom to find what works for the students and what they connect to the best. Once one style of teaching or one assignment is given, the teacher must then go over everything and reflect upon the students performance and think about changes that could be made to help. Reflecting can be done almost anywhere I believe. For most effective reflecting, I feel that when what is being reflected upon is fresh in your head and you have an open mind to critique things that is the best time.

Role Play

Many argue the point that role play is not an effective teaching style. Personally I do not agree with this statement in all cases. For instance during our lecture on Monday night we saw clearly how this role play effected many of our peers. Emotions were shown and tempers rose. When we connect with a lesson or a teaching on a personal level I feel it is all the more vivid in our minds. Instead of reading facts and repeating them on a test and then forgetting all gained knowledge at one time, role play does in fact help us to keep more knowledge. Though tests do show and hold students accountable for a certain amount of gained knowledge at ONE POINT in time, role play helps to withhold this information for a much longer span of time.

As we saw in our simulation, the parents of higher level students were given much more attention than those of a lower level student that is struggling through school. This is the wrong attitude and approach to try and alleviate any problems within the school. We should still be challenging those higher level students but also creating solutions to help along those who are/may be left behind. I'm saying that students will then soon all be on the same level by any means. This approach to helping each student in their specific way will ensure that every student is being challenge and succeeding to the best of their abilities.

Passion

Passion is something that I feel really does need to be present in a classroom.  It definitely needs to be within the teacher, and if the students are passionate about the subject, music in my case, then it will be all the more exciting to work together.  It also is exciting to see passion grow from student to student, teacher to student, or just within one individual.

In my middle school the grades ranged from 6th to 8th.  While I was there I had 3 different choir directors (music teachers) for the 3 different years.  The teacher I had my 7th grade year was the most influential of those years, if not all of my choir/musical years.  Mr. DeBoer was not only a great musician, but a very passionate about what he did, and all students could tell.  During the year he was there he worked with 2 choirs during the day as well as many general music classes.  After school he put in time with "Showstoppers" and he also started a group called "World Music Chorale."  All students were very excited about more opportunities to perform and learn new music.  Also this gave a different type of music to students more interested in one or another.  This show how involved and passionate he was with what he did.

Another thing that showed how much he cared was when the time came to do solo and ensemble contest.  It was my first year doing it and was very nervous when it came time to select a solo.  I asked him for his opinion and he said he look to see if he could find something.  A little less than a week later he came back with "Ave Maria."  The only thing was that it wasn't just Ave Maria, it was an arrangement by him.  He took time out of his crazy life to arrange a piece just for me to sing.  This really has made a huge impact on me to this very day.

Authenticity

Is being authentic something that just happens?  Or do you feel it is something you have to work to achieve?  There are some limits to authenticity I do believe.

I have had some teachers who were authentic inside and out.  They were their own person and did not try too hard to be something that they just were not.  I have also had some teachers that had absolutely no authenticity whatsoever.  They tried way to hard to get the students to like them.  They picture what the "cool" teacher is and try to become that teacher.  They focus so much on that idea that they don't spend anytime showing their students their true self.

Compassion

Some question whether compassion really does have an official place in the classroom.  I believe it definitely does.  

My sophomore year in high school I was in Geometry.  The teacher I had, Mr. Daniels, was also the Varsity basketball coach.  I saw him day in and day out and though I personally did not talk with him much at first regarding math I saw his interactions with each of his players.  He talked with them almost everyday to check in and make sure everything was going well with them.  Also, he would make sure they stayed on top of all their studies so it would not become a problem for the team.  Whenever any of them needed help he would make some sort of arrangement to help.  By doing this he gained much respect from every one of his players.

Eventually my horrible math skills gave me some trouble on a certain lesson we started one week.  It didn't get any better later in the week and Mr. Daniels knew I was struggling.  He called me over to his desk and asked how everything was going.  I told him it was alright, and that math was never my thing.  And he asked if I had spent a lot of time on it.  I responded with "A fair amount..." knowing that i went from right after school at 3PM to 10PM with poms to marching band to my dance studio, and arriving at home at 11PM and then starting homework was not the best way to learn and work hard.  He then found out how involved I was in other things.  He did not go any easier on me or show sympathy, he said I shouldn't burn the candle from both ends and was worried that eventually the flame would go out and it would not be a happy or healthy situation for myself. This showed me that he treated me equal as any student but still cared enough for my well being and the quality of my school work.  It really was an eye opener and he continued to be involved and interested with almost all I did from then on out.