Considerations 1

Running head: CONSIDERATIONS ON TEACHING

Essay # 2 – Considerations on Teaching

Márcio Padilha

College of Southern Idaho

EDUC 201 – Hurley

Fall/2006
 Considerations 2

Considerations on Teaching

Having worked for two years as a guest teacher, for one semester as a long-term

guest teacher, for one semester as an ESL-Title I Instructional Aide and currently as a

Secretary to the Counselors, I realize that being a professional educator is normally

perceived as a binomial relationship where the teacher and student are bound together in

the search of the concomitant promotion and acquisition of knowledge with the ultimate

purpose of personal and societal growth and improvement. Nonetheless, there are several

concerns besides actual teaching that face an educator on a daily basis such as

governmental and administrative demands, co-workers personalities and egos, student

discipline, motivation, health-related and legal problems as well as student family issues

and parental participation and interference which easily go unnoticed.

On the other hand, although not as easy or frequent as one might anticipate, I

believe it to be very rewarding when an educator perceives the subtle indications that the

true intrinsic value of education has finally been instilled in a student’s mind as that in

itself carries the potential of setting a chain reaction that can result in both personal and

social improvement. For instance, having been assigned to cover Ninth Grade Language

Arts Writing for a semester allowed me to have a place of distinction with the 167

students I presided over. Most of the native English language speaking students took the

stand that “if Mr. P, who is a non-English speaker, knows all this, I, as a native speaker,

should know as well” whereas the non-native English speaking students took the stand

that “if Mr. P, who is ‘one of us’, knows all this, I can do it too”, a premise which also

held true throughout my term of service as an ESL Instructional Aide. Moreover, being a

believer in constructivism, I was never afraid or embarrassed to tell a student that I did
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not know an answer to a question, always prompting that “together we could solve the

problem”, another premise which has carried over to my current assignment as a

Secretary to the Counselors.

Finally, regarding the profession in itself, it does offer advantages, both intrinsic

and extrinsic, such as the opportunity of dealing with culture, interpersonal interaction

and mentoring, relative good pay with a career plan and benefits as well as extended

summer vacation and other breaks throughout the year do sweeten the pot.