What teachers should do?

Before I came to America and became a teacher, I used to think a teacher s job is to hold students in classroom and teach the subjects, punish bad students and praise good kids, consistently seek resources for teaching. But after I started teaching in America, I realized that I dont know what my job was, in other words, I dont know what I should do. My first two months of teaching was a mess, I have to begin with learning what I should do as a teacher, so I entered MATC program, not only to become a better teacher, also I want to explore more about teacher s job, especially what teachers should do to make accomplished teaching. As I joined MATC and continue teaching in American K-12 public schools, I began to realize that to make accomplished teaching is just not about teaching, there are more things I should do. Teachers should know and understand students diversity and make effort to meet their needs. Teachers should understand policy and subject matter and use his/her pedagogical knowledge, skills to teach it. Teachers should be a part of school community, join professional development and be good model to students and staffs. Teachers should keep studying and improve themselves to be life-time learners. Know and understand the diversity of students, make most effort to meet their needs. It is truly important for teachers to know about their students, especially their backgrounds, not only their family, but also their previous knowledge. If you already read my Artifact 2, you will know that I got many troubles with some girls in my first year, the actual situation was worse than the scenario I wrote, the school dean said that it was riot, and they made trouble not just in my class, but other classes also. Things didnt get better after we tried multiple strategies, until we began to know these girls family, they were all single parent, families, and they all had experience of being abused at home. By knowing this, we talked to individual students and got to know more about them, got to understand their diversities, we made special behavior plan for them, not just to discipline them, but used positive influence, which was always mentioned in TE 891A and B (I havent had TE 891 B at that time), to encourage them behave at school. We solved the problem at the end. I was impressed by how important knowing students diversity and background is, and started to work to know all my students, my classroom management was improved a lot, because I began to use different strategies to deal with different students, for example, I will not discipline a kid who was consistently in trouble and disciplined by the school, I would use positive influence, like candies or sending good news from school e-mail to their parents to give them a compliment. Look at artifact 1, you can see my progress. Knowing your students doesnt mean to know their background only, teachers should also know their previous knowledge to adjust teaching, for example, if you know your students already had American history class, then when you teach orange chicken, Chinatown, or the city of Guangzhou, you can make connections to their knowledge, which will make way more sense to students. I feel I am getting better when I began to understand the diversity of students, and every time I try different strategy to meet

their needs, I feel I am one step closer to accomplished teacher. Teachers should understand policy and subject matter and use his/her pedagogical knowledge, skills to teach it. If you want to be success in America, you have to know our standards, said by a school HR in Illinois when I visited their immersion program. It was so true, especially for teachers, the word standards could probably mean the policy, the subject standards, the standardized test, or expectation for students performance. The first time I knew the importance of standards and policies for teachers was in TE 818, summer of 2011. At that time, I had never taught in America, had no sense about American schools either, so I didnt understand that concept well, and definitely, did not pay any attention to any standards or policies at the beginning of teaching. Then I was stuck on what to teach and how to teach, until that point, I realized the importance of knowing standards and policies. They are the basic guide, all teachers should understand it, make it your guide for teaching, then use pedagogical knowledge and skills to teach it. The most common but effective method I use is backward designing, in which I will study the standards and policies first, determine the assessments, then design to build up. By reading my artifact 4 and 5, you will see how this works and how I used my pedagogical knowledge and skills to teach it. Policies are also very important to know, for example, teachers should know the NCLB before they start teaching, even before they are hired. It was always beneficial for teachers to know the standards, policy and subject matter, therefore they will have the goals, and they will not be stuck, they can use their skills to teach the content. In MATC class TE 818, TE 842, 843, 807 it all mentioned the words policy and standard, I can tell how important they are, and I feel now after deeply studied these contents in MATC, now I am truly confident on my teaching and students performance. Teachers should be a part of school community, join professional development and be good model to students and staffs. This is an easy contrast: in my first year of teaching, I did attend the PD, but I didnt participated much, because I didnt know its important, and I didnt perform well at school practices (Bully circle, new formed tests). I thought they were not important, the IB training made no sense to me, neither did the MYP. It was obviously that I didnt improve in my first year. And because I seldom take to other teachers, at the end of my first year, many teachers still didnt know my full name! After taking the MATC course TE 842, I realized the importance of participation in PD and school community. If you read artifact 4 and 5, they are both from my second year, compare to nothing in the first year, my second year was much better: I participated in all PDs positively, I communicate with other teachers very often, designed this curriculum together with other foreign language teachers in department PD, and I even became the good model to staff: take the new formed evaluation which I didnt have to take. Teacher who do not participate in school PD, dont communicate with other teachers, will not improve, in other words, teachers should be a part of school community, and participate in PDs. Before I learn MATC courses CEP 891 and TE 891B, I didnt

realize that instead of memorizing what you said to them, students tend to remember what you did, and they will do what adults do. Now I believe thats true, because I tried to model all the desired behaviors to students (Artifact 3), for example, keeping classroom clean, being organized, making most of class time, students actually picked up what I and repeat the same and good behaviors. The reason I put this with participating in PD and being a part of school community together is that the first two are also expected behaviors for students therefore they can be good models. After I made these efforts, you can tell my success from my artifact 6, teachers should join the school community, PD and be good model of students. Teachers should keep studying and improve themselves to be life-time learners. Teachers will need to consistently think of improve themselves, because the society and technology will not stop developing, so as teachers you can never be lifelong accomplished teacher if you quit learning. Thanks to all the MATC courses provided different materials and information for us to learn. Thanks to TE 894 classes we can exchange our teaching strategies and learn from others. Thanks to the Angel, D2L technology that we can communicate and learn from our colleagues any time, at home. My favorite part is probably the TE 894 weekly online meeting, where we can ask questions, ask help from field instructors and colleagues, and share our ideas. This is not the process of learning how to teach better, but also a process of learning in critical thinking. It will ask me to read some articles first, then write my teaching journals, after that I will do self reflection, then think how the problems occurred, how to improve, and finally write my improvement projects, in this process, critical thinking can be practiced. Now I am finishing my MATC program, but I will not quit learning. I will seek any chance to learn, learn from PD, from workshop, from evaluation, and through teaching. I will continue improving myself in my future teaching career. Teachers should never quit learning, they should be life-time learners.