Reflect on yourself and your current experience thus far. How do you feel about the professionalism you have demonstrated thus far? Reflect on at least two important points shared in this chapter that may help you in improving or maintaining your professionalism as an educator
So far, I believe I have done a great job keeping consistent with my acceptable professionalism in the schools. As the book mentions, it is always necessary to keep your professionalism as a teacher. However, it is even more important to keep your professionalism when you are student teaching in several different places around many other professionals already in the field. It is imperative to establish yourself as a professional in order to gain the respect of the students and other professionals in the schools.
The first point I really remembered to keep in mind throughout the rest of my placement and teaching career in general was that students are "hundreds of anxious, percepting, role-model-seeking students just waiting to form perceptions of their teachers." All teachers should and must remember this every single day, whether it is in the classroom or seeing their students outside of class. If you as a teacher model inappropriate behavior, some students will model that behavior in your class and at home.
The second point I need to continue to do is not showing the students when they get to you. I am sure some students have gotten to all of us at some point so far in our student teaching, and hopefully we all responded in a professional manner. My first cooperating teacher stressed the importance of staying calm and not showing emotion when the students get to you, because if they know they got to you, they won, and will do it over and over again. I have seen teachers show their frustration and anger towards or in front of the class and everything falls apart.
Overall, educators have to accept the fact that being professional is part of their job title, off and on the job. We, as role models, must set the standards high for our students.
It can be extremely irritating when I ask a student to stop talking while I am teaching. And they do - for about 2 seconds - then they start right back into it. One sixth grade boy likes to exclaim, "I wasn't talking! Why are you accusing me of that??" I just watched him and heard him speaking and he denies it with no qualms whatsoever. Most of the kids do not like having to stay after school for retraining, so I just quietly tell them they will be getting either a high or low level for their actions. It's as simple as that. No emotion necessary on my part. I think the frustrating part is 1. they are causing a disruption in our teaching time and being disrespectful and 2. we can't control the environment when someone is out of control. We all want everything to go as planned, but they just won't cooperate with our plan.
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