Resilience

Teachers need to be taught resilience in there education programs. Our countries education for educators is sad and ineffective, to say the least.
Teachers need to experience more clinical/hands-on teaching experiences in their education and certification process. If teachers had real experience, and we able to see what education is like "in real life" then they would be more mentally and emotionally prepared and aware of the upcoming challenges in their careers. This would also give an opportunity for those who would drop the profession to find out that they are not interested/capable before they finish the degree and are stuck in classroom where they don't want to be.
Resilience can only be taught with hands on experience. Since every person has different strengths and weakness-they will face different and varied amounts of challenge in the field of education. Because of this, it is impossible for a professor to stand up in front of a class of future-educators and say/warn them what they will find challenging as a teacher. This can only be found out individually by each person.
If our system was more effective, we would give our future-educators ample opportunities to figure out their personal challenges in their education and before they step into the classroom as a professional.

Humility

Once, as I was directing the woodwind warm-up for marching band, I was incorrectly telling them to do the rhythm in one section of the piece. When we got into the large group for a music rehearsal, the director got upset with the section for doing it wrong. I admitted in front of the entire ensemble, at their aid, that it was I who had made the mistake and told them to do it incorrectly. It took a lot of courage, but i most definitely gained the respect of my section for doing so.
A teacher should never seek confidence and power/control at the expense of humility and truth. Students are smart, they know when you are wrong...and they know when you aren't admitting it. Although it feels like you are losing their respect for making a mistake, it is actually the opposite. Students will respect a teacher more who is willing to admit that they make mistakes, that they have fault, that they are human.
I had a director once who would never admit he was wrong-even when it was blatantly obvious. This caused him to lose, not only respect, but trust from his students. They felt less comfortable to approach him about issues and they just lost trust in the fact that the students were his focus. His inability to say he was wrong made students feel that he cared about himself and his image more than the respect and trust of his students.
Teachers need to realize that image is important in a classroom when it comes to leading by an example and by being a professional. But, their image is not important when it is about being in-charge or being right all the time.
Never sacrifice integrity and humility for pride and power.

Efficacy

Someone once said, "You cannot love another fully until you first love yourself fully." Although "love" isn't necessarily a central focus of success in education, the quote does apply. An educator must be fully developed in their understanding of themselves to be able to connect cognitively, emotionally, and mentally with their various students.

Confidence is also a key component of effective teaching. In a sense, teaching is a performance-you have a set amount of things to talk about and you have an allotted time in which to convey the information/message. A teacher must be confident with their presence in front of the classroom and confident in the information that they are teaching.

Persistence is also key in education. Some students may lack motivation-but i truly believe that, given the right trigger, all students can find inspiration and motivation. Persistence also applies to teaching in front of a classroom. If you have an unruly class-don't give up. There are a toolbox full of tools that can be found to regain control over a class. However, some teachers confuse persistence with stubbornness. Do not do this! Stubbornness can be seen by your students and peers and it is one of the easiest ways to lose the respect of your students and co-workers.

I believe one's work ethic is a telling sign of whether that person will be successful in the classroom. If one is willing to work for what they want and to continue on a goal, even if it seems impossible, they will work well with students and all the unique issues and tasks they bring.

So, if I were to reword the quote to apply to education, it would say, "A teacher cannot connect to their students in the most effective way until they are fully connected with themselves: until they understand who they are and what they have to offer."

Free Topic: Global Achievement Gap

I just want to reiterate how genius Tony Wagner (the author of The Global Achievement Gap) is. I was truly inspired and also worried by his book.

I was inspired by his passion and ideas on how to transform education into a 21st century program. He not only focused on the usual "testing is bad for students" but he went further (demonstrating critical thinking) and presented a set of 7 skills that would be the goals of education. They would create stronger students, employees and citizens of our future generations. I also feel that his concept of teaching as a communal activity is great. His "learning walks" and open-door policy about classrooms is useful because it creates accountability for all teachers. He also focused on motivation and "interest-based learning." I agree with him that our education is outdated and uninteresting to students. Of course they wont be engaged if they are bored and learning information they will never use. We need to give them a hands-on education that they can invest in and make their own.

His book also worries me though. It worries me because I have a greater understanding for how unstable the education profession is. It also makes me a little embarrassed to be entering into such an inefficient and ineffective profession...I am inspired though to make as much of an impact as I personally can. I can only help my personal students in my class and hopefully by raising my expectation and performance-I will inspire a new generation of good teachers (and of course doctors, mathematicians, journalists, etc).

If you haven't read The Global Achievement Gap by Tony Wagner. I strongly encourage you do. This is a man who has had personal experience in teaching and administration and had devoted his life to improving it. I know my summer reading will consist of the rest of the books he has written thus far.

Inspiring Inventiveness and Creativity

Sir Robinson was right when he said, "Our public schools focus on educating students out of creativity." I do believe that creativity and adaptability, not facts and statistics, are the keys to a successful future in today's world. After all, nearly all the information we will need to know as adults has not been discovered yet...
Our entire educational structure needs to be revamped if we truly wish to focus on producing the smartest and most competitive adults we can. Robinson focused on the fact that the world education is experiencing "academic inflation." Therefore, it is merely a race to see who can digest and regurgitate the most facts in a lifetime. However, if everyone is able to do that at a great capacity, employers and such will be looking for people who are different-people who are creative, adaptable, and those who can not only apply but those who can expand on the facts they know.
These new-age skills are not only not being focused on in our schools, they are hardly being taught at all. In order to prepare world-ready adults, an entirely new outlook for education must be put into place.
You may then ask, "well, how do we do that?" Truthfully, I do not know. For a national change, I can imagine it would take years of planning and a great sum of government money (which our country does not possess) to do so.
However, every teacher can make a difference-even if it is to just their students. We can choose to apply these analytical and creative processes into our curriculum and into they way we structure our classroom. We can ask students to do the factual, right-wrong, assignments-but then we can ask them to think deeper: to find something related or to journal about their confusions or insights into how the information may be used. We can ask them to demonstrate the higher levels of understanding and creativity by allowing them to structure their own assignments and show how they would apply the knowledge. Who knows, maybe your students have a new, and probably more engaging way of studying and applying factual subjects such as math.
I believe that if the teacher values creativity they can find a way to integrate it into their classroom, no matter how factual or structured their subject area is.

Role Play Exercises

I believe role playing activities can be affective in classrooms for students of the appropriate age level. It does help the students become emotionally and more intellectually engaged in the material they are working with. However, the situations need to be carefully planned out so that they are successful. In our recent role play, the groups needed to be smaller or there needed to be a larger time allotted so that they discussion got to a deeper level and more people could have participated.
I do believe that students retain information longer when they emotionally invested in the material. However, a teacher needs to realize that the students can't be invested in everything because they would never be able to cover all the topics required in the allotted time.
I do believe it is important for students to be knowledgeable about the factual parts of the material (which could be presented in a lecture prior to the role play). I believe that to truly debate a topic well, you need to have the facts to support your arguement. I do believe that lecture is helpful because all the necessary points are covered and explained, whereas in a role play, things can be misinterpreted based on the specific situations that they students are acting out.
I believe that listening tendencies of school boards and teacher groups is based on the beliefs of each different school district. I guess, as a whole nation, we actually tend to listen to those who are seeing/speaking for the underachieving students-whether they support them or not. I believe this because our current legislation is focused on the improvement of the lower percentiles of our student population and not the upper percentiles.

Passion in Teaching

In sixth grade, I had a wonderful art teacher. I used to think I was not very good at making things, I had a hard time creating pieces from scratch. However, when I got into my sixth grade art class, that all changed. He didn't ask me, or the other students, to come up with ideas from scratch for watercolor, clay, etc. Rather, he offered a theme or idea which allowed students, like myself, to hone in on a direction and idea. Once I had some guidance, it was much easier for me to create art that was totally of my own inspiration because I was given a more specific idea to brainstorm on.
He was very passionate about his job and through his passion, and desire to pass this passion on, he had adapted his teaching to reach all students.
I think the main thing I learned about teaching with passion from him is that it's not just about the teacher expressing their passion by what you say and do, but more about allowing students the opportunity to experience and be involved in that same passion and feel the inspiration that comes from it.

Authenticity

My belief on authenticity limits is that they aren't really different levels. Either you authentically enjoy teacher or you don't. And even more refined-either you enjoy the subject you teach, or you don't. Therefore, being authentic as an educator is just a manner of whether of not you are in the right field of work. I interviewed my elementary music ed teacher last semester and I learned a lot. But, the most powerful thing I took away from that interview was one mere statement that she made, she said, "You should only teach if you can't see yourself doing anything else with your life." Now that is why I believe it is black and white if teachers are authentic in their roles as the educator.
I also believe that their is a facade that teachers must put on, almost like acting, with their students. However, just because a teacher is covering up that they are having a rough day does not mean that they are not being authentic. I believe that as the leader of a classroom it is your job to let the education come first, no matter how you are feeling. Also, if you are showing your students that you aren't in control of yourself or your feelings, then they can not trust you to teach then to the best of your ability.
Students can tell if a teach is not authentic merely by how invested the teacher is in the curriculum of subject in general. Students are smart, they can tell when you are not interested or engaged in the material.
If a teacher is seen as inauthentic with their students, the students will be unmotivated. The students will act this way this way because the teacher is the main motivation for interest in the subject and if the teacher is not motivated, that tells the students that it isn't interesting enough to invest their time or thought into. Also, if a teacher is unmotivated, they may turn a child away from a subject that they are very talented in or that could be a potential career path. That is too strong a consequence for any teacher to be responsible for doing.
In conclusion, I believe that the best teachers are those who want to do solely that-to influence children in a positive way. In my opinion, that is where a teachers authenticity comes from. If you are only doing education because you can't do something else...don't. It is not fair to your students because you are not being authentic to yourself or them.

Compassion

When I was a senior, in high school, I had one of the greatest teachers for AP English II. You know why he was so great? Because he understood the pressures of being a senior and how you have so many things to do and sometimes you homework comes second to things such as college applications, audition, interviews, etc. He also understood the need for students to have time for themselves after many 18-20 hour days because of school involvement and activities. He was respectful and compassionate to his students and in return, his students not only respected him but actually tried harder because we wanted to please him.

One such example of his compassion took place during my last semester of senior year. We had just read Hamlet (or were supposed to have finished it) and we had ten pages of reader's notes due in a few days. However, due to college prep and a play that I was in, I had not had time to finish the reading let alone be able to do the reader's notes. So, not hoping for a good response, I approached him two days before the notes were due and explained my situation. I was pleasantly surprised and taken back by his response. He thanked me for being honest with him and gave me an extra 5 days to finish the reader's notes. He said that he understood how stressful a busy schedule can be and that he was glad I was proactive enough to talk to him ahead of time. He wished me luck with my activities and college stuff and that extra week got me an A on my reader's notes. His compassion not only relieved my stress and allowed me to succeed, but it also encouraged me to try even harder in his class because I respected him as my educator that much more.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T (find out what it means to me)

One time, my senior year in high school, we were voting for a speaker for the graduation choir concert. Every year a senior was selected to speak to represent the choir and the graduating students of the choir. Needless to say it was a big honor to be selected and in the past the selection process had been an had extensive rounds of student voting to narrow the candidates down to one-the selected speaker.
During my senior year, it came time to vote for the speaker and all the seniors were very excited for the opportunity to speak and vote. However, instead of the usually extensive voting and narrowing process, my director merely took all the nominees and did one vote, the winner only winning by a vote or two against about 15 other nominees. I was not selected, but that was not the issue. The issue was the lack of care and time the director took in making this decision. After classes that day I, politely asked my director if I could speak to him. He offered me some time. I explained that i was not challenging the decision but rather challenging the process by which the speaker was chosen this year, that it had not been addressed with as much care as it had been in the past. I said I didn't expect anything to change for that year but that in the years to come he should consider how he goes about the voting, since it is a big deal to the seniors of the choir. After I explained my feelings he was very polite and thanked me for my maturity and thoughtfulness about how I approached the situation. I thanked him for his time and left.
However, the next day in choir he opens up the floor for nominees again. Confused, everyone asked why (since the decision had already been made). He then proceeds to say, in a very snarky way, that, "Someone came and complained about the way we voted, so i guess we have to do it again to be fair." Directly following this statement be proceeds to stare straight at me (in front of the entire ensemble) and shoot me an annoyed look. I know that people saw him look at me because several people turned around and gave me puzzled looks.
In the end, the voting turned out the same. But since I never asked him to re-do the vote I do not feel that it was my decision to waste time, ultimately it was his decision. It was also his decision to lie to me in his office and thank me for being strong enough to approach him and then to turn around and publicly say the opposite. Needless to say, i did not feel respected by my educator in that moment.

However, this same teacher did show me respect in many moments. My senior year, I took an independent study with this director and I was very stressed one day about how my peers were negatively speaking about my achievements and how I only got the successes because I was a "favorite." This particularly bothered me because I have a philosophy that you only get what you work for, and I know I had worked hard to build all those achievements. One day during my independent study I was merely venting to my teacher about my frustrations with some of the comments my classmates had been making and I had not expected him to respond as we were working on a project. However, I was truly amazed when he stopped and told me that all the leadership positions, roles, and awards he has seen me receive were truly based on my willingness and desire to work and succeed. He said that I had earned all those achievements.
I felt such respect in that moment because this was the teacher with expectations of perfection and the idea that nothing can ever be good enough. It must have been true for him to go out of his way to say something as encouraging and respectful as that, for he is a man of very few calming words.