Tales from my Professional Experience

Apart from the whole restriction of income thing, what prevented me from becoming a teacher earlier is a certain stigma that has always sullied the teaching career:

Those who can, do. Those who can’t teach.

I don’t know who said that but I have always found it to be a little unfair. I know lots of great teachers, including my mother and sister, and they are certainly not untalented people. Also, it will forever be easy for teachers to cop the ‘flak’ for working a 9-3pm job, nine months a year – that was something I was preparing myself for (the ribbing but also the somewhat leisurely hours!).

This prac experience has certainly blown that expectation out of the water. What I now know of teachers is that the 9-3 part is the easy bit! On top of a substantial knowledge requirement of subject matter and pedagogy not to mention a certain gift and patience for working with children there is what I like to call the ‘optional extras’. Serving on school and district committees, volunteering (or being volunteered by the Executive) for extra curricular activities sports coaching and other potential projects that could be up to a year long, “maintaining bridges to parents and guardians, purchasing materials and equipment and engaging in PD activities”(NSW Institute of Teachers, 2004; Simpson, et al., c2005, p. 4). I observed and took part in as many of these as I could, then went home each afternoon to design coherent, orderly and engaging lesson sequences (NSW Institute of Teachers, 2004: 3.2.2) for the day/s ahead – often till well into the night.

Professional Development is not something I gave much consideration to before now, and having seen how it works at the coalface, I still need to be convinced. What I saw was not particularly engaging! Luckily, the ESL classes that we were able to attend, covered material that wasn’t foreign to me thanks to Paul Dufficy’s wonderful Multilingual Classroom unit in Semester 1. I really think that PD is an important investment in people (Thody, Gray, & Bowden, 2004). Part of me is looking forward to the ongoing learning process of PD and I know I will respond differently to different styles of mentoring – hopefully in a positive way. I think it is up to the Principal to make this part of teaching engaging, and scheduling training that won’t be seen just as a chore for those attending. Looking down the track a bit, if I was ever to become a Principal, I’d like to think that I would go out of my way to make PD interesting for my staff.