Collaborativeness

In order for a group to work well together you need to have both a leader and followers. In order to be an effective leader you need to be able to delegate tasks and not be in the leadership position for power. In order to be an effective follower you need to be able to work well in a group and do your part to help with the task at hand. While working in a group it is very important to always have the groups best interest in mind and respect each other's ideas and opinions. Group work in classrooms can be very beneficial. Through group work students can have the chance to check their answers with other students and give them an opportunity to talk things through out loud and help those who may have not understood something the first time it was explained. Collaboration is a little different than group work. Collaboration is students working in small groups to make a larger project. This would allow each of the students to share their ideas and work together to come up with a new idea. Though collaborative projects can sometimes be difficult when some students don't participate as much, I believe they are very important in a classroom. I think working collaboratively gives students the chance to know what working with others is like. These students are going to have to work with people for the rest of their lives and it is good for them to learn how to deal with different people and different group situations. Even as they get in the work field they are going to have to work with people who don't pull their weight or don't do as much work. So it is important to have them learn this at an earlier stage so they know how to work with it.

Efficacy

As a teacher it is very important to be confident in everything you do. You need to be confident in how and what you are teaching. If you aren't sure of yourself and the way you are handling a classroom, your students will be aware of this. You need to be aware of the way you are presenting yourself to your classroom because without confidence the students could take advantage of you as a teacher and try to control you. Also, without confidence in your teaching your students may not respect you and you will have a hard time teaching them. Being an effective teacher takes a lot of time and effort. You need to believe in yourself and what your abilities in order to become an effective teacher. As a teacher you also need to have persistence. You cannot give up on yourself or your students at any time or in any situation. You need to let your students know that you believe in them and you aren't going to give up on them. Students can tell if a teacher doesn't like them or doesn't believe in them. You need to be aware of how you treat each of your students and believe that each student can succeed. If the student knows that you think they can succeed they will be more likely to believe it themselves and realize that it is important to work hard and learn. It is also very essential for a teacher to have a good work ethic. Teaching is not easy and it takes a lot of time and effort. You need to take time to prepare for classes, make homework assignments and grade them and also to try and be a part of the student's life by getting involved in the community. In order to be successful as a teacher you need to be willing to devote time and effort to your job and remember that the students are the most important part of your job.

Inventiveness/Creativity

I think that encouraging creativity in schools is extremely important for students. Allowing students to be creative gives them the opportunity to be unique and share their individual ideas. We need students to be inventive and creative so that they can make a difference in the future. In the job market today it is extremely important to be well rounded and be able to think creatively. It seems that most people who succeed and are well off in today's world are creative and willing to try new things. Having these qualities can get you very far in life. Today we seem to focus only on math, English and science. These subjects are important but it is also very important to let students explore their creativity. We need to implement more creative programs into schools like music, drama and art. These classes can help students creativity come out. Sir Ken Robinson made a great point when he said that students seem to grow out of creativity as they get older. This is because they are not given the opportunities to continue being creative and are sometimes afraid of being creative because they don't want to be wrong. It is going to be essential as teachers in the 21st century to make sure we encourage our students to be inventive and creative so that they will be able to survive and go farther in life.

Role Playing Activity

The role playing activity we participated in on Monday night was an interesting way to learn information. I think that the way things were presented made students able to get emotionally involved in what was going on and they might have taken more from this activity then they would have from a lecture. I believe this way of presenting information wouldn't be good for trying to teach facts to students but that it would work better to teach students a concept or idea. The activity allowed students to share their opinion and hear other students opinions which I think is essential in learning. I think that it may have worked better to have had the students read about No Child Left Behind or hear a lecture on it first and then do the activity. This would have allowed us to know more about the legislation before we tried another way of learning information. Overall it was really nice to learn in a different way on Monday night. A lot of classes can get boring or old really fast because the information is presented in the same way every time. I think it's important in a classroom to switch things up and teach in different ways so the students don't get bored and you can reach more students. I think that if students emotions are involved in learning they will learn more or remember the information better.

Passion

Passion is an essential quality for teachers to have. Without passion for what you are teaching the students may lose interest and not learn what they need to learn. In school I was never very good at science. It was the class that I struggled with the most. My junior year of high school I had to take Chemistry and I wasn't looking forward to it at all. I started the class thinking about how I could get through it with a decent grade, but to my surprise I really enjoyed the class. My teacher was so passionate about Chemistry and he loved teaching it. This made me excited to go to class each day and hear what he had to say. He had a way of making Chemistry exciting and making me want to learn it. I can say today that Chemistry is my favorite science class because of this teacher and how fun he made it. I learned so much in that class when at first I didn't even want to be there. He made Chemistry a class that I now enjoy. His enthusiasm for the subject helped me to be willing to listen and excited to learn. I believe this is how all teachers should be. They should be passionate and excited about what they are teaching in order to help the students become more interested and want to learn.

Authenticity

I think that in teaching it is very difficult to define your limits for expressing authenticity. So many different situations will present themselves and you will have to judge the correct way to handle them and act in them. I think that most people want to be true to who they are and act the same way in all situations. Most people like the person they are and they want to show everyone else who that person is. I think this can be a difficult thing to deal with in teaching. It is hard to show students who you really are without crossing certain boundaries. I think that it is important in teaching to be able to judge what aspects of your life you need to leave out of teaching. For example, in my life my religion and my faith are extremely important to me but I don't think that means that I should go around telling me students what I believe. That is crossing the line and has to do with the whole separation between church and state as well. But also because of my strong faith and my beliefs I will act a certain way in a classroom. I will stress being kind to everyone and being respectful to teachers and peers. I think by being who I am without specifically saying what makes me who I am is okay. It is good to set a positive example for children but you always need to be aware of boundaries. Students can tell if a teacher is not being authentic if the teacher has different requirements for different students or different classes or if the teacher doesn't act the same way in the same situations. This can really hurt the students and their want to learn. If at a teacher is not acting the same way in every situation, the students aren't going to trust him or her and they won't respect that teacher. It is hard for a student to learn if his or her teacher isn't setting the same guidelines all the time and isn't being themself.

Compassion

Throughout my years in school I had many teachers who were compassionate and cared about me as a person. When a teacher made an effort to get to know me it made me feel important in their lives and I respected them so much more. I remember a specific teacher who treated me with compassion and how it made a huge difference in my life. When I was in tenth grade I had an English teacher who made the effort to get to know me personally. She was interested in my academic life as well as my social life. She was helpful in situations when I needed help academically and in situations when I needed advice about something. This teacher slowly became my favorite teacher and I was always excited to learn things from her. It made me realize that teachers can be both a role model and a friend. I respected her for being compassionate to me and it also made me think of her as a friend. To this day we still talk and she was an important figure in my life because of the way she treated me. I think that it is important to practice the right amount of compassion in a classroom because with too little your students won't enjoy you and with too much your students won't respect you.

Respect

Respect is a key element needed in a classroom setting. In order for the classroom to function properly, it is necessary for both the students and the teacher to treat each other with respect. Growing up I had a number of teachers who treated me with respect as well as many teachers who did not treat me with respect. Respect or lack of respect can impact a classroom in many ways. It is important to respect your students because if you don't respect them they will not treat you with respect either. Without any respect in a classroom, not much is learned and it can turn out to be a negative experience for anyone involved.

I remember when I was in sixth grade and I had a family and consumer sciences teacher who didn't respect me at all. I would go to her with questions and she would ignore me or answer me in a way that made it seem like she thought I was stupid. I didn't enjoy the class at all because of how she treated me. I remember one particular situation where she sent home a homework assignment that involved doing laundry and writing about the whole experience. We were to fill out information about how large of a load it was and how we separated the colors. I took this assignment home and with a little guidance from my mother, I preceded to do the assignment and get a parent signature for it. I turned in the assignment and later that week my teacher handed out grade slips and I noticed that I had received a D on this assignment. I stayed after class and asked my teacher about it and she told me I didn't follow the instructions and gave me no further explanation of what I had done wrong. When I told my parents about this they immediately got involved and sent my teacher an email asking her why my grade was so low. She replied telling them the same thing she had told me. Later I asked her to see my assignment and asked her if she would go over it with me so I could see what I had done wrong. She said she would look for the assignment and after a while she told me she couldn't find it. This whole situation confused me and I was hurt by the lack of respect my teacher had treated me with. I didn't get as much out of the class because she didn't respect me so I no longer respected her or wanted to listen to anything she was teaching.

My sophomore year of high school I had an English teacher who I believe treated me with more respect than any other teacher I have had in my life. English wasn't my strongest subject and yet she worked with me whenever I needed help. She was always available after school to help me with papers I was working on or answer any questions I had. She treated me like I was an adult. By treating me like this she impacted my life in a postive way. I felt important and felt like she really was interested in me and my education. This helped me to love my English class and learn a lot from it and from her. When I was a senior in high school she asked me to be her student assisstant and this increased my respect for her. She respected me and treated me like I was mature and therefore I wanted to go to class and wanted to hear what she had to say.

As you can see from my experiences, respect is essential in a classroom. If a teacher does not respect you, you in return will have little to no respect for them. Respecting your students can go a long way and can make them want to go to your class and want to learn what you have to say. In today's world kids often feel like adults don't treat them with respect and feel like they can't speak up for themselves. By respecting your students you can make a positvie impact on their lives and help them to feel important and excited to learn.