The Changing Profession

Because teaching is such an involved component of the overall process of teaching, a teacher must be committed to teaching to a diverse array of students and be aware of changing standards of teaching.  No longer is teaching a one dimensional component. Armstrong, Henson and Savage (2004) have informed us that “change is a constant feature of your professional life as a teacher” (p. 30). It involves a diversity of students and an ever changing landscape of responsibilities.  Because the profession of teaching it is so diverse and ever changing, teachers must be able to deal with its many “mental and physical challenges” (p. 14).  Other changes are also taking place that have affected how the profession of teaching. Some of the things the authors point out are that the teacher’s ability to be able to multi-task, dealing with many situations that may arise in the classroom, responding to changes quickly in the classroom. Other changes is the debate of the purposes of education and standards –based education and many teachers find themselves torn between teaching interesting lessons and trying to adhere to the new changes. In addition, changes such as an ever changing student population challenges teachers to find new ways to incorporate students where English is not the native language.  Because there are so many changes that have taken place, as teachers we need to take advantage of learning in ways that will benefit our future students.  I believe change will always be a part of the teaching profession because our students are always evolving and learning.

In this profession that is forever changing, technology is an added incentive and raises moral, ethical issues, in most of the debates about school changes. While reading this portion of text, I was thinking about when I was in school (my children say back in the day) the technology of today was not prevalent back then.  Technology such as cell phones, lap top computers, iPod, iPhone, mp3 player, kindle, and the list goes on forever.  This new and fascinating technology opens up a whole new world for the teacher and student. Many in the teaching profession even see this as a way to widen the technological opportunities to expand to students who are not accessible to these kinds of technology used in the classroom (Armstrong, Henson and Savage p. 58).  Professionally, I see this new technology as great new way to use in teaching.  As the authors have pointed out, learning is multifaceted.  As I mentioned earlier when I was in school teaching and learning seemed to be one dimensional and mainly focused on a standard way of teaching and learning. Now even though it seemed one dimensional, I believed that I still learned what I needed to learn.  It’s just that in this age of newness, we as teachers can help our students make connections in the world while improving their outlook in future job markets.

Personally I have seen one aspect of our changing profession in my public school system, which recently adopted the full use of technology in the classroom. What it consists of is the use of lap top computers as the mainstay of the curriculum.  In other words the lap top computer would replace the standard book and students would use laptops as their primary source of learning.  I favor the idea of using whatever technology that has the best interest of our students.  Because so many of our students are computer savvy, this kind of curriculum can become limitless and prove to be a good response to students who find sitting in  a classroom uninteresting. The other drawback I see is if the teacher is not computer literate, then being opened to learning new skills would be at his or her disposal. In light of this new technology that will eventually show up in the classroom, James Banks (2001) pointed out in the reading “requires rethinking school curricula” (p. 13). Not only do we need to rethink school curricula but as well rethink how we can best use these and other types of technology in the whole spectrum of our  school’s curriculum.