Personal and Professional Development

     The majority of posts that follow will respond to teaching and classroom management suggestions found within various sources such as books, blogs, articles, and online news sources.  This blog will deal with the source material in its entirety so that the reader can benefit from both the source and the suggestions offered in response to it in the most contextualized manner possible.  The purpose of this blog, however, is not to replicate source material that is already available.  This blog is to offer a call to, and materials to aid in, the process of self-directed professional development.
     I am a Foreign Language teacher, and I realize that teachers receive copious amounts of professional development opportunities from their schools and districts alike.  Sadly, these opportunities too often focus narrowly on how to use new pieces of technology within the classroom, or on the new lesson planning, grade book system, or teacher evaluation strategy that is currently fashionable.  These professional development sessions have little to do with improving the teacher and the teaching experience for either the student or teacher.  True and meaningful professional development must come from the teachers themselves because it is we who have the desire to be better at what we do.  We must take responsibility for directing our continuing improvement and maturation as teachers. The best skill that will allow a teacher to direct his or her develop a teacher is one that is familiar any teacher, past or present: self-reflection.
   Self-reflection is a part of any good teacher preparation worldwide.  In my own experience, however, I often only used self-reflection to judge the success or failure of one classroom activity or strategy.  More times than I like to remember I found and focused on failure when I reflected, and that fear-based focus paralyzed any efforts I made to be a more effective teacher. I ignored that self-reflection is not solely concerned with error correction.  Self-reflection ought be about recognizing both the strengths and weakness about the totality of work that an educator puts forth.  Yes, it is great to focus on celebrating and maybe improving a particular lesson, but never downplay the effort devoted to teaching because an activity may have gone awry.  Just like teaching a unit or lesson, self-reflection is as much about putting our successes and failures in a meaningful context so they can be fully understood and appreciated.
     The reality of the profession in which we work as teachers is not often discernible by the items reflected back to us within our work environment and by society as a whole.  But the reality is, if a teacher is confident about his or her ability to reach and teach the students under his or her charge, then the teacher will exceed the expectations of any and all evaluations.  A confident will be able to field any new changes in planning or the grade book with relative little stress because the foundations of his teaching and classroom are built on stone.  He knows himself as a teacher, and he knows and loves his students as people, and grasps fully the reality of the people they will become.  We cannot blame anyone but ourselves if we allow the ebb and flow of the profession to scare us into mediocre performances as teachers.
     My reality is, I do not know myself as a teacher.  Many times I tried to mimic what I thought those with power over my position wished to see or hear.  Alas, this was wrong.  No one wanted to see a teaching performance from an actor who could become something different from one moment to the next.  Mimicry of any kind never made me a better teacher because whatever I was projecting was never a true representation of myself or what I could bring to my students as a teacher. Moreover, I never had the courage to seek guidance from my colleagues observing me, because I thought asking would mean the loss of my job.  Truthfully, asking is a form of both personal and professional development, and to a good colleague and mentor, questioning is never a sign of weakness.
     I have never been fired or released from a teaching position due to my inability to be a teacher.  Be that as it may, if the reader were to look at my work history, the reader might swiftly conclude that I must be unable to teach, given that my stays at schools are brief and have sizable pauses before the next position.  Not true.  I left these positions out of fear of the inability to properly manage and teach my kids.  One bad day represented an utterly irreparable failure that marred. my career and students forever.  There is little truth in those decisions to leave because they were by-products of fear and not fact.  While most of you may not abandon schools or teaching completely out of fear that you are lacking as an educator, it is certainly a thought that invades our minds with far too much regularity.
      This uncertainty does not have an exterior origin.  It is not the fault of inattentive students, "helicopter" parents or administrators, lack of training, or the lack of productive instructional time.  These are all valid concerns for any teacher, but their existence or nonexistence does not determine your worth as a teacher.  In contrast, how you perceive these challenges can amplify or dampen your confidence.  I chose the latter.  I saw each problem as an obstacle so daunting that it was almost was not worth overcoming.  This capitulation does a grave disservice to myself as a teacher and beyond.  That abdication of self-worth diminishes the ardent fire I hold for teaching itself, and it negates the qualities and talents that make me (and you) the caliber of person able and worthy to help pave a pathway of success and self-reliance toward the foggy and uncertain future on the horizon.
     In order to help our students navigate the on-coming doubt, we cannot doubt ourselves or our worth in what we do.  We cannot feed this inner-quarrel by falsely claiming that its beginnings are not within ourselves.  My work here is meant to dispel my own fear, and maybe yours, so that I can continue to move forward and to pursue my vocation as a teacher.  From this moment on I am in charge of becoming what I know is within me: a true teacher.