Week 7: Are we professionals?

Week 7

Three things I learned this week were:

1. The different ways in which we categorize the idea of professionalism. I haven’t really thought about the ways that society classifies different “job” into a hierarchy of professionalism but I can see more clearly now that it can be easily done. We give higher levels of regard to professions such as medicine or law (as the article Teachers and the Teaching Profession states). Professionalism can be a very subjective topic, depending on geography, culture and stages of life, professionalism can look very different.
2. The idea of self-regulating the teaching profession as teachers. I wasn’t aware that solely the minister of education, could take away teaching certificates for “incompetence,” which to me seems a hard thing to judge, especially if you are looking at new teachers, did this. I can only imagine that in my first year of teaching I could possibly look somewhat like I don’t know what I am doing!
3. I was unaware that in certain provinces, “principals are prevented by law from being members of teachers’ organizations.” Therefore there creates a division between teachers and “leaders” or management in the system, which to me seems like a way for breakdown to occur, not cohesion.

2 connections I made:

1. From the Teachers article I connected with the statement that, “ The prime responsibility of teachers is the educational well-being of their students.” The idea here being that it is our job as professional teachers to create a safe, appropriate learning space for each student. We need to examine how this looks for each student.
2. From the Exploring Teacher Identity article, something I connected with, although I can connect with much of it was how much a person changes by retelling their story. I had a very trying year last year, was sick, hospitalized and had to take a leave from school. However, since then, and in the re-telling of my journey, I learn a little more about myself each time I go back through a very trying time.

 

1 Question I have from the readings this week is how can we as teachers come together with our educational organizations (our business leaders) to help us reach our common goals of educating our learners with some academic freedom in regards to what works best for us, the people in the classrooms, responsible for the outcomes of so many youth?