[MUSIC] "Why become a teacher?" Becoming and being a teacher, I'd like you to reflect and start the session by kind of asking yourself these questions. Why did I become a teacher? How did I become a teacher? Who influenced me to become a teacher? And what keeps me in teaching? These are interesting questions, and I'm sure each one of you have a powerful narrative to tell about how you became a teacher, and why you became a teacher. So, I'd like you to think about that, and to think about the moment you decided to become a teacher. How did you understand teaching? And what keeps you or sustains you in teaching? So, why do people chose to become teachers? Or why do people chose to teach? Is that because of force of circumstances that was the only available profession for you to do? That it was by default that you got into teaching. Is it a family tradition? Are your mum and dad a teacher, grandparents are teachers, uncles and aunts are teachers or people in your extended family that are teachers? Or is it maybe somebody that is close to you that is a teacher? Is it your love of children? Is it that you like to engage with young people? You like to be involved with their learning? Or is it a desire to pass on knowledge and skills? Your answer might not necessarily be 1 of those 4. It could be 2 of those 4. It could be all 4. But they're questions that I think you should need to think about. Why do people choose to teach? Or, why did I choose to teach? Now, here's a quote from a teacher in Zimbabwe, and I'm going to read it for you. From the time I was in school, I wanted to be a teacher because I wanted to show that teaching could be much different from what I had experienced as a pupil. Now, often people teach the way they were taught. So, the models that they had in teaching, they replicate that. They reproduce that. There's something very different in this story, isn't there? Can you spot the difference? This teacher in Zimbabwe is saying, "I want to teach differently to the way I was taught." Isn't that interesting? Now, if we just had to teach as we were taught, sometimes we experience bad teaching. I remember having a horrible teacher in grade 10, where if there was no answer we were caned and we were petrified to be in this teacher's class. If I had to teach like he had taught, I would have not been a very liked teacher. In fact, a lot of the children would not want to come into my class, they'd be fearful of me, they'll be frightened. And here I want to talk a little bit about how we need to move into areas of professional development, for instance. That if I continued, and thought "I need to teach like how I was taught", and didn't do any better, I would have replicated or reproduced what that very weak teacher, or the very weak way he taught, through intimidation and fear. And I would've learnt that there are much more exciting ways to get learners to be excited about learning, to want to be in class, to really be motivated, and to have a zeal for learning. Now, you're going to see that there is a criteria for selection of teachers by an organization called the Global Education Management Services. And they identify four points. I'd like you to maybe think about what is the criteria for teaching or selection criteria for teaching in your country or in your province. It might be similar, but it might be very different and maybe you can do that as an exercise of comparing - what the selection criteria for teachers in your country is to those listed by the Global Education Management Services. Now, I'm going to tease out these 4 points as I move along with this presentation. The first point that the organization talks about is the continuous professional development. And I picked up on that in week 1 - there needs to be a commitment to continued learning, from colleagues, from students, from continuing professional development opportunities, reading and research. And I remember talking about how one could research their practice, or how we could create communities of practice with our colleagues. So, what are the opportunities open for you? And what opportunities can you create for yourself if they're not there as yet? Authority and self confidence is another selection criteria that is referred to. Are you open to learning from others? Are you open to learning from your colleagues? Or do you feel that you know everything and that you would be right, and that the way you do things is the only way to do things? Or do you feel that there's an openness to learning, that your colleagues might have something to share with you? Do you see your students as a resource that you can learn from? I often see my students as a resource that I can learn from. They often are able to teach me things about some topics that I may just not know enough about, and I always start my classes by even asking, "Do you know anything about this this topic?" And I'm amazed at what young people can bring into the classroom: stories about my grandparents said this; well, I have read this; well, I watched this on the BBC Channel. So, can I learn from my students? Sometimes, some of my best material, which I've used in subsequent years, I've picked up from my students. How do I expand my repertoire? What is my teaching repertoire? What are the tricks of the trade of the teacher? What is your repertoire? What would it need to expand it? How could you do things differently? For instance, in previous week I spoke about drama and music, and using role play in the classroom. Perhaps that's something you may not feel so comfortable using because you may think that's a lot of risk. But you'll never know if you didn't try that out, because that could be a possibility that your learners might be just waiting for, but you may not have realised it. What sources can I draw on to develop that repertoire? So, if you were going to use dramas and role plays; you might want to read up on that; you might want to talk to colleagues who have used that method; you might want to ask them, "What are the risks? What if something goes wrong? What should I do?". And that's how we expand our repertoires, by learning, asking and questioning. Of course, cultural sensitivity is something we're going to pick up in the weeks to come. But how do learners learn; how groups of learners learn and want to understand the world; how certain groups want to be taught; or what are certain things that you just need to know, for instance, and that are sensitive to particular groups, in terms of their beliefs, in terms of their values, so that you're not being offensive - but at all times trying to be inclusive. But also, am I open to challenging my own cultural prejudices? Sometimes we don't know all of the stuff, and we can always ask. How do people experience the world in this way? What do people do? How do different groups of people deal with this issue? So, sometimes it might not just come from you. And here you can position yourself as the learner and somebody from a group that might be different culturally from your own that may say, "In my experience, this is how we do things", and that could open up a whole new process of learning. Now, there are a couple of student views from Antigua that I would like to draw your attention to, and these are 4 boys who have been asking their teachers questions, and this is some of the responses they got to the questions. Let's look at the first one, they say, "Stop ignoring us but we want to know more information about a subject." So, this particular student did ask a question and felt very ignored. Let's look at the last one: "They act like they didn't hear you." Are you one of those teachers? Are you one of those teachers that when somebody raises a question, you ignore it? Perhaps it may not seem important to you at that time, but maybe to that learner, and maybe to many of the other learners in that class, that question is the most useful question, and could give you one of those teaching moments we spoke about in week 1. You would never know if you never engaged. Perhaps if you didn't feel so comfortable asking that question, maybe you could ask this question, help me understand - why would you like to know the answer to that question? Or what drives that question? And to give you a whole lot more information of why that question might be useful to respond to, now, I'd like to conclude with "Me as I am and would like to be". How would I describe my current repertoire? Is it sufficient? What is the feedback I'm getting back from my learners? What is the feedback I'm giving to myself when I'm doing or teaching with the current repertoire that I'm using? What is the feedback I'm getting from my peers? It's always nice to ask this question: what would I like to do differently? It's a nice way of posing how could I change, because we can always say, "How can I do this?" again, and again, and again, but it might be a different angle to disposition, "How would I like to do this differently?" You never know, you could create a hell of a lot more excitement in your class by trying something different. And if I tried to do something different, what support or motivation do I need to change? Sometimes trying something different is risky and fearful because it's unknown. But I mentioned a couple of things like; reading; speaking to peers who are using those methodologies or repertoires; and that may give you more confidence. [MUSIC]
