The next post in the Becoming a Teacher series is about what I consider to be one of the most important aspects of becoming a teacher and should be a sustained thread throughout a teacher training program – no matter if that program is two years or five years: building your teacher identity. There are a number of different reasons why people decide they want to be teachers, but all these reasons culminate, at some point, into building a teacher identity.
So, what do I mean by building a teacher identity? I think this is different than the knowledge, skills, understandings and traits of successful teaching; however, building one’s teacher identity does require learning the skills and traits of successful teaching. Addressing successful teaching would be the logical next sentence in this paragraph, but that I think is part of the teacher identity. What I mean is that successful teaching is context specific – what it means to one teacher is not the same as what it means to another. We can look to general ideas and definitions around successful teaching, but those are too general to have any great meaning to the individual. The accreditation or registration authority defines successful teaching, but this is a baseline; a baseline from where to build one’s own identity as a teacher and define what teaching success means within that identity.
On AITSL’s website (the national regulator) they reference Heffernan et al., 2019; Leahy & Selwyn, 2019; and, Roy Morgan, 2017 and say that to be a teacher the job requires “specialised expertise, strong interpersonal skills, adaptability and a learning mindset.“ I agree with all that, but that doesn’t tell us much about what a teacher does. AITSL also publishes the seven Australian Professional Standards for Teachers, which are broken up into 37 criteria at three different levels: Proficient, Highly Accomplished and Lead. And while these are a good starting point to understand what teachers do and need to know, it does not encapsulate what a particular teacher does as a teacher.
Teaching has come to mean so many things to different people. We hear words like coach, mentor, role model, or when describing what teachers do, we hear about ones who inspire; ones that are compassionate; ones that are experts, etc. There are myriad ways to describe teachers in general, but what kind of teacher will you be? This is the quintessential question that I think potential teachers need to answer for themselves as they progress through their teacher education program. There are countless examples of teacher stereotypes out there that have inspired people to become teachers: Do you want to be the John Keating (Robin Williams, Dead Poets Society), inspiring non-conformist?; Are you the lazy casual, Elizabeth Halsey (Cameron Diaz, Bad Teacher); Or do you aspire to be anyone of the real-life film portrayals of inspirational teachers, from the tyrannical Joe Clark (Morgan Freeman, Lean on Me) to Jaime Escalante (Edward James Olmos, Stand and Deliver), who taught a class of students who were ready to drop out of high school in East LA university-level calculus.
While it is easy to look at these media-portrayals of teachers and think about teacher identity, it is actually a lot more complicated. It requires deep introspection and careful reflection about what it means to be a teacher and what you want to accomplish as a teacher.
As a pre-service teacher you will be observing a number of teachers in the classroom and many former teachers (likely your lecturers and tutors at university) and analysing their practice; however, it is important to realise that teaching is not a cut and paste profession. In other words, what others do, whether perceived as effective or otherwise, cannot be cut and pasted into your classroom or your teacher identity – each individual needs to carve out their own way forward. One of the first things that might help you with building your teacher identity is articulating why you wanted and still want to be a teacher. I have held countless interviews with prospective teacher education students and asked this very question and the answers are as vanilla as you’d expect: I want to help kids; I like kids; I like helping kids; I like teaching. To all of them, I wish I had said: then go volunteer at a local Big Brother / Big Sister charity –teaching is not for you.
Teaching is a profession – if I asked a future doctor why they wanted to practice medicine or a future lawyer why they wanted to practice law, I would hope I would get more back then, I want to help people be less sick or I want to help people navigate the law. It is nice to want to help people, but I think we need to think deeper about what ‘we’ as teachers want to be and do. The doctor who tells me he wants to help people with cancer have better survival rates, excellent. The lawyer who wants to help people fight injustice in immigration law, fantastic. For teachers, you want to help kids, fine, help kids with and accomplish what?
You need to think about what makes you tick; what type of person are you; what do you picture when you think of yourself in the classroom? These are not easy questions to answer, but I think it is important, not only to think about it, but to write it down and try to articulate it, over and over again. Your views of teaching and your views of self-as-teacher should change with time, but some things might and should always hold true. For me, my views about teaching have changed enormously in decades since I started teaching. As a leader in the military, I taught young men how to use weapons, how to fight; how to iron their uniforms and make their beds and everything in between. This shaped my views as I became a professional teacher and later a lecturer. While I like to think I am more relaxed now and not as intense, I often get comments that I am intimidating and intense – some things are just foundational in who we are. Maybe this is just part of my teacher identity. Maybe I should just articulate a little about my teacher identity and what I think it really means to be a teacher an let you decide:
For me it says it all in the namesake of this blog – maximising student potential – I want to maximise the potential of my students at any and all levels. What does that mean, you may ask? It means I focus on learning – the academic components of learning. I want my students to be forced to think and to be pushed academically to their limit. I will not accept anything but their best effort. If it’s not good enough, here’s some feedback, do it again. Not good enough again, here’s more feedback, do it again. I rebel against the idea that mediocrity is good enough. You have personal issues, I empathise, but I’m here to maximise your potential – do it again. Your grandma died, I’m so sorry, take your time, but the longer you take, the more you have to do, because you’re going to fall behind. I’ll help you catch up, but it’s going to double your workload, why? Because I’m here to help you learn and learning takes time; there are no shortcuts. Do I lack sympathy? Empathy? No, not at all. Instead, I like to think of it as focus. I focus on what’s important: important to me and hopefully to you. I’m here to help you maximise your learning potential; to help you get the best out of you. I accept nothing but your best effort. You may not like me; you may think I’m an asshole; you may rebel against my methods, but likely, in time, you’ll grow to respect my methods, or not. That’s ok. I make no apologies for who I am. I know why I am here and what I need from you – your best. Nothing more, nothing less. If you want mediocrity for yourself, that’s ok too, find another teacher!
I maximise student potential, what do you do?
Maximising Student Potential 