For this first blog about the characteristics of the novice teacher that I agree with most.
1. We believe that the novice teacher should be an effect communicator.
- This characteristic is one of the most important characteristic to me. A teacher might know all about a subject and it's topics but if they cannot communicate this knowledge to their students it won't matter and the students will have a hard time learning. I have had many teachers that are like this, they know so much information about the material we were learning but they cannot communicate it to me. I am not sure if it was due to them thinking it was simple and they could not explain it on a level I understood or if they just have bad communication skills.
The article I read was about the difference in skills between the students and the teacher. The article opened my eyes to other ways then just delivering the content area subjects to the student, the article discussed a lot about the lack of communication with computers. It went on to tell about the different skills levels different people have on the computer and how some students might know more then the teacher actually knows about the computer. The article also involves the opinion that all teachers should be able to access and use the computer for a variety of useful ways.
2. We believe that the novice teacher should have in-depth knowledge of content.
- In my new PDS I am seeing how important this is in the high level classes. My mentor teacher at the high school possesses this characteristic and is so helpful in the classroom. Most of the students that I see at the high school have more trouble with basic math skills then learning new information like trigonometry function identities. Students know these identities but then can not complete questions that involve using these functions because they can't use things like the distributive property or FOIL.
The article I read on this topic was about a middle school teacher talking about geometry. The article talks about the teacher asking the students to complete a problem that had the students find the area of a given shape. The teacher was glad to see that most of the students had the correct answer, when she went to the board and explained and showed each step she used to complete the problem one student had the correct answer but did their differently. The teacher could not figure out what the student had done. Since she couldn't explain it she didn't want the students to use the way they had, not because it was wrong but because they didn't understand why. Having in-depth knowledge of your content is important, from the story above, having this is mathematics is very important because the situation above is not the only situation in math that this happens.
I also think communication is one of the most important characteristic of the novice teacher. It is critical for a teacher to be able to convey your message to the students. I have also been in a classroom where I feel like the teacher has great knowledge on the subject but is unable to communicate therefore is unable to share/teacher the material. I believe these two characteristics go along with each other because no matter how well you know the content you can not teach it if you can not communicate well. This also goes the other way around, no matter how much of an effect communicator you are you can not teach something you do not know.
ReplyDeleteExperiencing being in both a high school and middle school classroom, I clearly see the 'butterfly effect' of how information and concepts not retained in lower grade levels can drastically effect performance and achievement level in higher grade level courses. It's our job as teachers to explain and demonstrate where they are going to see the material again later on down the line. It's our in-depth knowledge and past school experiences that we have a clear look into our students' future because we have been there and done that, and we can guide them and give them a glance into the future.
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