Food For Thought: What teacher are you going to be?

I can name all my teachers right up until I started having four to six teachers per day that changed every few months. Mme. Gibson, Mme. Small, M. Dupuis, Mme. Klassen, M. Larivier, I could go on but I think you get the idea (also you probably noticed I was in french schools). Some teachers I had to think about for a few minutes to remember anything about them other then their names and others jumped out with giant neon signs over their heads screaming “AWESOME TEACHER”.

(Ok, so a few jumped out at me screaming “Oh man you made my life difficult, I totally hated classes with you!”. Like my fourth grade teacher who was obsessed with “being green”. Recesses were spent picking up trash and our class play that year was all about recycling. But I digress...)

When you talk to teachers about why they became teachers most will tell you they love kids and want to make a difference in their lives. That they had a teacher that absolutely changed their life as a child and they wanted to follow in their footsteps. They want to inspire the next generation to learn and enjoy learning.

So while you're job hunting for your future teaching job stop and take a minute to figure out what you want to be known for as a teacher and how you can accomplish that. Do you want to be known for your passion? Your ingenuity? Your rapport with your students? What can you do to be the teacher you want to be? There really is no magic answer to this. Every person needs to find their special “thing” inside themselves. The information you are to instill upon these children may be handed to you, but how you teach them is up to you.

So, what teacher are you going to be?

By Jodi Sonoda

Jodi has been blogging for over 3 years, and is excited to currently be blogging with educationjobsite.com for Nexxt. She is attached to the internet at the hip and enjoys the constant connection. She spends most of her offline time playing dolls and reading picture books with her two year old.