Upon observing Christine teaching students on “Human Behavior and the Social Environment”, this paper is a summary of her strengths and areas that need improvement. It is aimed at developing a well-rounded appreciation of growth and development as an educator.
Christine’s strengths include having a caring personality, proper planning of the lecture, as well as demonstrating professional ethics, values, and accountability. One of the strengths observed includes capacity to pose questions to students. It helps test their ability of remembering, absorption and preparation. Among the rest advantages is the capacity to spur excitement and interest in students, discussing how well they did in their previous assignments and providing feedback before proceeding to other assignments. Available literature shows that, if well utilized, such skills have the ability to positively impact the instructional credibility of the teacher (Li et al., 2011). Thus, students’ performance as well as growth and development of teachers is also enhanced (Davis, 2011).
Another round of strengths noted during the one-hour observation include employing electronic means in teaching, making the learning experience more enjoyable and presenting a highly academic and professional personae. Moreover, the learning process may be made entertaining through using well-organized, colorful, and multi-functional PowerPoint slides during the lecture. Among the strong personal characteristics are highly furnished use of verbal, non-verbal and rhetoric skills.
Available literature demonstrates that some attributes within the teacher’s control, such as effective teaching and planning skills, professional characteristics, enhancement of classroom climate (McBer, 2000), use of technology to spur creativity and innovation among students, and ability to provide a framework for critical thinking and problem solving (National Education Association, n.d.), not only facilitate students’ performance but also contribute substantially to the growth and development of upcoming educators (Keith-Spiegel, 2002).
At a personal level, Christine demonstrates mutual respect and kindness to her students. She is able to use her personal life experiences and educational journey to instill valuable lessons to the students, and create a very comfortable atmosphere for class discussion. Additionally, she is able to improvise definitions and content from her sharp memory and capacity to control language, hence ensuring a smooth flow of the lesson. This is a very strong point in that available literature shows that during awkward moments when a teacher may stumble, mispronounce words or forget the content of the lecture, learners may perceive such moments in negative light, hence adversely impacting the teacher’s instructional credibility (Li et al., 2011).
It is evident, however, that Christine needs to improve her self-disclosure as she admits that she came from a low socioeconomic family as well as she reveals some family issues she has had to face. Available literature demonstrates that teachers who self-disclose their private information to students run the risk of fueling issues that may lead to adverse publicity and credibility (Li et al., 2011; UNESCO, 1998). The priority, therefore, should be to exercise professionalism when self-disclosing information to students.
References
Davis, J.S. (2011). Five secondary teachers: Creating and presenting a teaching persona. Current Issues in Education, 14(1), 1-27.
National Education Association. (n.d.). Preparing 21st century students for a global society: An educators guide to the “four Cs”. Web.
Keith-Spiegel, P. (2002). The ethics of teaching: A casebook. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Li, L., Mazer, J.P., & Ju, R. (2011). Resolving international teaching assistant language inadequacy through dialogue: Challenges and opportunities for clarity. Communication Education, 60(4), 461-478.
McBer, H. (2000). Research into teacher effectiveness. Department for Education and Employment Research Report No. 216. Web.
UNESCO. (1998). World education report: Teachers and teaching in a changing world. Web.