The most important thing that I see missing from the classroom today is inspiration. In all areas of my life, when looking back over the years, where I learned the best and the most is when I was inspired, not only by the subject, but by the person from which I learned.
I want to inspire my students to not only learn what the school system says that they need to learn, but also what they are interested in learning. The challenging thing will be to have these two thing become one and the same. I want them to understand that learning is not only a lifelong passion, but also a privilege that no one can take away from each of them. I want them to know that every subject can and will be useful at some point in their life and that contrary to many people�s beliefs there really is no such thing as useless information.
I want to be a teacher that challenges their intellect and poses the questions that makes them truly think about the subject at hand and how it relates to real-life situations.
I know that in my life, no matter who a person is, he or she needs to earn my respect before I will give it to them, whether they were my boss or my college professor. This is the same treatment that I will expect from my students. I do not want to intimidate them into respecting me, just because I am their teacher. I want them to give me their respect because I deserve it and I have earned it. When I have achieved that level with my students, then I believe that learning will flow from me to them and also from them back to me. I once said �A great leader commands respect and a poor leader demands it.� Those that lead by intimidation will appear to have respect, but it will not be there when the intimidator is gone from the presence of those whom they are leading. Some people might think that this comparison of a teacher to a leader is only a metaphor, but I believe that these two words are synonymous in the context of classroom teaching. My job will not only be to lead the young people I teach through a year of school and hopefully etch some information on their brains, but to lead them to the future and be a part of shaping who they become as adults.
As a math teacher I will be challenged by the many types of learners for the field of math. I will have to accommodate visual learners, hands-on learners, and aural learners all at the same time. I will need to keep the higher level students challenged while offering as much support to struggling students all at the same time. Teaching will be the ultimate test of multi-tasking for me and I believe, while this will be very difficult at first, I believe that I will be up to the challenge.
I will need to employ many hands on activities, some individual, but most will be cooperative group experiments. We, and I say we because I want my students to know that I will always be learning right along with them, will explore different ways to learn and how best to retain that information which we have learned.
A number of years ago I decided that I no longer liked the word �problem� in most contexts and at that time I adopted the word �challenge� in its place. Problems are something that we like to whine about and seldom are up to solving them, in most cases. Challenges, just by the nature of the word, allow the human spirit and competitive nature of Earth�s most advanced species to do what it does best, think, reason and solve the challenges of life.
My classroom will be a place where students are presented with challenges every day and they will not dread that thought, but come to class with challenges they hope to solve.
I will establish myself, very early in the school year, as a very strict, but also fair teacher. My students will know that the discipline which I require from them will be enforced and that it will be far easier to follow the simple rules of our class than to break them. I know already that some students will not like me for this strictness, but others will see it as the best platform for learning.
One of the challenges I see in young people�s lives is that there is very little consistency from most adults. I will be a man, in their lives, that does what he says that he will do and this will allow them to trust me. If they trust me, then they will be able to respect me. Trust is the most important part of any relationship, whether it is a marriage, a parent-child relationship, or a teacher-student bond. I do not want to be my students� �buddy�, but I do want to be their friend. I want to draw a clear distinction between these terms with my students, so that they know that a buddy is someone they �hang out with� and that a friend is someone who they can confide in and come to ask for help with almost anything that is going on in their lives, not just academically.
Becoming a teacher is far harder than most people, who are of course not teachers, think that it is. Some people do not become teachers because they think the pay is bad; some do not do it because they think the students are bad; while others do not become teachers because they just know that they cannot teach. I do not care about the pay, too much, but I do care about the students. These young people are the parents and leaders of the future. They will lead our cities, counties, states and country some day and �if someone does not become dedicated to them becoming successful adults, they will not.�