This week my learning came from the article written by Pamela Osmond-Johnson. The first thing I learned was the term “post-modern professionalism”which refers to teacher professionalism encompassing engagement in cultures to solve problems of practice. Another thing I learned was the term “transformative professionalism,” which means that teachers are contributing to the quality of education. These teachers often advocate to challenge standard ways of teaching such as getting rid of standardized tests. I believe this is important because standardized testing, in my opinion, is something that has a time and a place, but it should never be used to define how successful our students are. The third learning I had was that some teachers actually spend less than half of their workday teaching in a physical classroom. I found this shocking because here in Canada, we typically do not see much other teaching going on. We are typically always in a classroom, or just indoors due to new safety hazards and school policies.
My connections this week came from reading the paper written by Krista Yerkes. In the opening paragraph I instantly connected to what was written as I feel like I am in the same situation. I am trying to figure out who I am as a person, but also who I want to be as a teacher. I also connected to the portion of her writing on what is a discourse. I was also unsure of what this actually meant in regards to the career of teaching.
My question this week is how can we, as becoming teachers truly find our identity? What types of things influence our teaching identity?