ED521 A15

What does it mean to be a teacher?

Being a teacher means many things. A teacher needs to wear many hats during a regular day at school.  A teacher needs to be the teacher, mom, dad, nurse, guidance counselor, an event planner, and the list goes on.  One day on the job is not like any other.  A teacher needs to be able to multi-task with many things happening at the same time.  Teachers need to be able to meet the different needs (both academic and social) of each individual student.  In education, the pendulum seems to swing from one end to the other.  It never seems to hang in the middle.  This is due to politicians making decisions that have an effect on what happens in education.  A good example of this is No Child Left Behind.  NCLB was a federal education law that drove some schools to narrow their curriculum and use standardized tests to measure how well the students were doing.  Teachers are highly qualified in their subject area.  Teachers need to have a curriculum to follow that is tied to the state standards and use their students’ data to drive that curriculum.  However, teachers need the freedom to use their professional judgment to choose the material that best meets the needs of their students.  A teacher spends more time with their “school family” than they do with their own family.  To be a teacher means countless hours of reading, searching, correcting, editing, etc.  Every teacher loves it (most of the time) and wouldn't trade it for anything else!