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Megan King Competency: Why Teach? Teacher Prep 1 4 October 2017

A. Some believe that if a person is unable to do any job, they just teach. I disagree

with that statement. Teaching involves multiple skills and a ton of hard work and

dedication. Not everyone can teach and only the ones that put in the hard work

can become good teachers. Someone is not born with the ability to be a good

teacher. They must learn and understand the ways of children just like any other

profession would have to learn how to do their job. If someone told me that

people just teach because they have nothing else to do I would say no, they are

not teachers. A teacher is someone who helps children to grow and learn and want

to better the children's lives. They are not just someone who has no education in

teaching and just stands in the front of the room, telling them information that

only the adult understands. They need to be able to interact with children and be

able to deliver the information in a way that the child will understand.

B. The career path I have choose to take is early childhood education. I want to do

something around the grade levels k-8. So far my favorite grade is around 3-4

grade. I prefer to work with younger kids because they are more excited about

school, but 3rd and 4th grade is the grade where you do not have to talk baby to

them and they begin to learn real-life concepts and not just how to count and sing

the alphabet. What has lead me to this decision is because I formed the most

relationships with the teachers I had during those years. From around 3 grade until

7th grade were the years that I had a solid teacher that I could trust and go talk to,

which I still am in contact with most of them today. They made school fun for me

and I really enjoyed being there. Without them, I probably would not even think
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about teaching as my career, since I would not have thought of it to be a fun thing

to do.

C. From a young age I have always enjoyed being around children. Once I grew up I

started using metacognition and asking myself, would this be something I would

want to do for the rest of my life? For a while I thought about it but never real

took any actions to go through with it. I continued to babysit and I now have

many jobs. Going into freshman year I was planning on being a chef, but then I

saw a sign about the preschool. Then I began to think again, why don’t I just take

this class and see how it goes. I fell in love with the preschoolers, seeing their

faces light up when they make something to bring home knowing their parents

will love it, or when they finally zipped their jackets up all by themselves. I want

to be able to give more children that same happiness.

D. Most of the reasons I want to teach are intrinsic but I have a couple extrinsic. One

of the reasons that I want to teach is because I enjoy being around children. I’ve

been babysitting for as long as I can remember. I have always enjoyed children

and interacting with them. An intrinsic reason I wanted to become a teacher is

because I like to be able to teach someone and I find satisfaction in the fact that

they understand something. It makes me feel good about myself that I was able to

help them. I help my friends with math and science homework and when they

understand what I am saying, it bring me joy. Finally an extrinsic way that I

wanted to become a teacher is because of the schedule. My mother is a special

education assistant at Hood middle school and I enjoy having weekends with her

and spending a majority of my summer vacation with her at the beach. It is

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important to know why you want to teach because it helps not only to know who

you are as a person but also what kind of teacher you want to be. Also I think that

it gives you a motive.

E. My biggest influences on who I am as a person today would be my middle school

math teacher Mr. Karthas. He was not only my math teacher but my track coach

and he taught me many life lessons. We still stay in touch and he views on life

just make so much sense and I value them. He has taught me that math is fun but

also things like to not care what others think. I believe that’s I decided to be a

teach, when I overcame my fear of thinking what others think. I will always be

shy and not want to speak in front of class but I have overcome that hump a little

bit. I figured that children do not care what so ever. There is a lot of views on

teaching and I feel like I would be judged by a lot of people because I want to be

a teacher. I decided not to care what others think and follow my gut and start

talking teacher classes.

F. The teacher I admire the most are ones like Mr. Karthas and other teachers I had

in middle school. They understood what I was going through between multiple

sports, lots of homework and having a social life. They were the ones I could go

to talk to for anyone one of those subjects for help. They were the teachers that I

could really connect with and they just really understood me.

G. To be an effective teacher you need to be energetic even though you have to wake

up really early. You have to be able to stand up and teach without monotone and

get the class engaged even when half the class wants to take a nap, including you.

You have to be able to make activities fun and seem like they aren’t learning
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when they really are. Be able to have different kinds of activities that go from

hands on to audio to get all the right brained learners and left brained learners

engaged. I believe I have what it takes since I am a middle brained person so I can

learn multiple ways and understand the students. Also I have a lot of energy most

of the time so that would not be a problem. Some qualities that I need to improve

on is presenting even though in front of little children I’m fine but older people

not so much since not all teaching is just with little, young children.

H. I’ve talked to my parents many times and I’ve contacted my old teachers to see

what they say. All my friends say that I am great with kids and it is the perfect

career for me. I have not talked to the school counselor yet about it. I have no ued

any material resources yet. I will most likely look into those more this year. I have

been taking courses such as child development and now teacher prep.

Government programs would be something to look into since I can learn many

things in workshops and things like that.

I. I have talked to many people that I know, that are teachers of different grades. See

how they compare and contrast on what they like and don't like. Testing how I

would like each grade. I have only done one job shadow but on days when

pinkerton doesn’t have school but Hood does, I like to go and talk to my odd

teachers and see how different it is on the other side. These experiences and

conversations are helpful because I am testing the waters and thinking if I would

really like to do this. So far it sounds like a fun job that I would love. There is

nothing so far that I have thought twice about. After my job shadows coming up,

there should be something but so far nothing.

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J. Teaching is a profession that always is changing. It is something that is very hard

to teach. In class we have been talking about how if someone is not capable of

doing anything, they just resort to teaching. This is not the case considering it is a

long journey on becoming a teacher and many techniques and skills to learn that

not just anyone can grasp overnight. Also a teacher need to be able to use

metacognition and think about their thinking. Think back to their lessons and

think about did it work out they want they thought it would. Think about how

could they make it better or change it. Not just everyone can do this well.

K. I’ve discovered the real reasons that I want to teach and not just because I want to

work with children. It’s that I find satisfaction in helping children and seeing them

be proud at themselves for doing a question. Also that I can help someone better

himself and get paid for it. It's not about the money (obviously) but it's about the

children. The reasons are intrinsic and not extrinsic which sort of surprises me

because I do find myself as sort of a greed person but I’m working on it. Based on

this I intend on becoming a elementary school teacher based off the things I learn

of myself.

K. ii. This goal is very simple, I would major in elementary education or k-8. I believe that it is

measurable since that there are certain steps I need to take to reach this goals such as going to a

college with my major, getting my degree, then getting a job as a k-8 teacher preferable an

elementary school teacher. It is accountable in that fact that once I become a teacher, I would

have hit my goal. I believe that this is realistic because you can never have too many teachers.

The population keeps growing and that just means there needs to be more teachers. The only
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thing that this goal does not have is a time limit. I would like to say in around 7-10 years I would

like to have accomplished this goal.

L. The only concern is if I would be able to live off of the salary but there are many

teachers that do it any have many nice things. They have been teaching for a

while so they do not have the starting salary anymore though. So it is a concern

but I am not very worried about it.