The Master Teacher

By: Sara

A couple years ago, a professor told me the most profound insight into teaching which changed the way I looked at the profession. She said that teaching is like an apprenticeship, you begin under the guidance of what should ideally be a master teacher and most importantly of all everyone begins as a novice. Those last words were words which have kept me, as a student teacher on the verge of becoming a fully qualified teacher, sane.

There is no doubt that teaching is one of the most demanding professions around. If you were to put it into terms of a business, a teacher plays multiple roles as manager with day-to-day classroom management, the administration in dealing with paperwork for grading and tracking student performance, public relations with students' parents, and human resources in teaching students. It is my own opinion that no amount of schooling can possibly prepare one for the roles a single teacher needs to fill in the classroom. The master teacher is one who has found a balance between all these roles to the point where he or she no longer needs to consciously think about it as a novice would. Instead, everything is second-nature: the curriculum is known by heart and can be flexible under any circumstance, assessment can be achieved almost at a glance, and management fails to fluster the master teacher. And I'm sure students are keenly aware as to which of their teachers were master teachers, which were still progressing, and worse, which had stagnated toward that level of mastery in teaching.

I had built up in my mind that I had to leave college at that master level; however, my professor helped me to realize that this was an unrealistic expectation to have which only brought about stress. Teaching is a profession built upon experience, and there is a sharp learning curve to it. Sure, some will reach that mastery level faster than others but everyone must go through the novice stage. Teachers are constantly learning something new to their profession, be it a new form of management or a new method of teaching. I guess what this all means in the end, is that for a novice, while it is good to set high expectations, there is a difference between high and unrealistic. Embrace failure since it will happen and learn from it. Then cherish the success and learn from those as well.

Extrinsic Rewards in the Classroom

By: Sara

I am currently placed in a 5th grade classroom which has been lamented by teachers as the worst in terms of behavior. Over the course of the school year, the three 5th grade teachers at the school have implemented a number of management strategies. As a student teacher, I was immediately struck by the fact that there are six management systems in place which are regularly enforced. Four use forms of positive reinforcement, one uses negative reinforcement, while the other is a form of punishment. In this brief post, I will describe the management strategies which use reinforcements and their effects in the classroom.

These reinforcement systems are as follows: Party points, Pioneer points, Caught in the Act, and 5-minute recess tickets. Party points are basically for all classes, homeroom, reading, and math. Students are awarded points (around 4) for good behavior and once they reach 50 points, they can have a party which is an hour of using personal electronics (iPods, game consoles, movies from home) and eating. Pioneer points and Caught in the Act are essentially the same idea as party points with students placing tickets that are given for good behavior in a jar to be randomly drawn at the end of the week with rewards ranging from a homework pass to ten minutes of free time. The problem with these intrinsic rewards is that students can easily choose not to perform the wanted behavior without any repercussions on their part. However, perhaps I have put this issue of extrinsic reward into the narrow context of my placement.

Research conflicts on whether or not extrinsic motivators are detrimental to a student's overall performance. One thing slightly more certain than this is that the extrinsic does not mean a transition into the intrinsic. The students in my class have had these rewards in place since the beginning of the school year and today, if praise is given for their good behavior, the question "Do we get party points?" soon follows. Teachers can create these elaborate systems, but they should do so with the end in mind: What happens when the system is gone? What happens when these students are placed under another teacher? Do we want these children to leave our classroom begging for rewards by enacting behaviors which are expected of them or do we want them to take up this responsibility as their own regardless of the outcome?