As a teacher, I have gained valuable experience of interaction with students. The teaching profession has impacted my life greatly. However, I have gained a lot of experience in teaching, much growth is still necessary for my personal development. Before I joined the teaching profession, I believed that teaching was a hard nut to crack. Nevertheless, I now believe I made the right choice of taking up the teaching profession. As a teacher I encourage students to participate actively in class. In addition, I like coming up with creative ideas and putting them in teaching (Rijlaarsdam, Bergh & Couzijn, 2005). Moreover, I like teaching because it boosts my creativity. It requires that one keeps abreast of knowledge so as to remain relevant. Therefore, a teacher should read widely in order to gain more knowledge. I used to fear research studies and extensive reading, but now it is part of my routine.
My strengths as a teacher include a combination of various skills. These include class management, as well as ICT application in education. Class management plays a critical role in education. It ensures that students participate actively in class. In addition, technological advancement has revolutionized how man operates. Towards this my expertise in ICT is critical to both my students and my professional progress. However, I have a weakness of being a perfectionist and this sometimes takes a lot of time.
As a teacher, I carry out my own assessment to know my strengths and weaknesses. I am a creative and an imaginative teacher and these personal traits have propelled my teaching skills. Secondly, I have a great passion for extensive reading as well as doing research. These initiatives have made my teaching easier and flowing. Teaching is an important provision. To start with, teaching enhances creativity and prepares an individual for future challenges. To ensure that I prosper in my profession, I always take teaching seriously. Teaching skills are significant to future endeavors, since most things that I would do in the future require teaching skills. Those might be: furthering education, operating business, and taking a leadership position, just to name a few (Meriwethe, 2001). As ateacher I would like to gain more insights into observation skills, research skills, managerial skills, and leadership skills. Therefore, my plan is to join an online University with offers the above mentioned causes to ensure that I can enhance the relevant skills.
Teachers face the problem of managing children with mental disorder so that they can catch up with the rest of the students. This challenge can be solved by revising the curriculum suite the need of these students. As a growing teacher and a professional I need motivation and reward system that recognizes the great work I do as a teacher.
I find teaching of art subject to be one of the most challenging aspect experience. The global contest of man continues to open up and as such, an in depth knowledge of different cultures and society’s norms is vital in promoting communication between any interacting groups. Cultural diversity and interaction involves the knowledge of different cultural patterns, since they are important in teaching. For instance, societal practices, traditional values of a given society, emerging values, and societal norms are critical to effective teaching. My teaching experience has changed since I joined teaching profession many years ago. I can now teach not only with confidence, but also carry out research to come up with great insights into the teaching profession. I am a team player, and I believe that students should be participating more in the learning process, so as to make the studying process successful and enjoyable for both.
Teaching profession continues to grow and, therefore, it is prudent for teachers to embrace a paradigm shift which calls for the inclusion of technology in teaching. In addition, the curriculum should be developed to be student-focused. Moreover, the students should play a critical role in generating views on how to make teaching interesting and insightful. In this regard I would suggest that virtual reality technology should be incorporated into teaching programmes.
Virtual reality technology has been widely embraced by instructional designers as a supportive tool for teaching and learning because of the various advantages it provides to learnners, such as enabling them to have a three-dimensional visualization of the changing relationships between multiple variables as well as difficult concepts. It is a place where learners make use of available resources and make sense of events as well as find meaningful solutions to existing problems (Winn & Windschitl, 2002). An effective learning environment should comprise of an enabling context with complete resources, and various tools. Use of technologies should strictly be to enhance the learning process by engaging the learners more.
Virtual reality technology learning, just like any other learning technology, is only an e-enhancement of already existing models of learning. Instructional designers use technology to attain improved learning outcomes, or a more effective evaluation of these outcomes, or more efficient and effective way of making learning available to learners. A model of Virtual reality technology learning needs to demonstrate the pedagogic principles for the added value of the operating visuals. According to Biggs (1999), a good pedagogical design must ensure that there is consistency between the curriculums, the teaching approach used, the learning environment chosen, and the assessment procedures adopted. The instructional designer must carefully define the desired learning outcomes, adopt the teaching and learning activities that enhance student learning, and implement assessment tasks that will adequately test whether the learning outcomes have been truly reached be designed. Alignment can only be achieved by first understanding the underlying assumptions regarding learning and then adopting the teaching methods that match those assumptions. Biggs (1999) explains that one way of achieving this is by adopting the assumptions and guidelines of a constructivist pedagogical approach, which is a learner-centered in that it its focal point is what the learner does, and places learning and teaching at the center of the process.
Conclusion
The rapid changing teaching environment calls for teachers to be dynamic and ready to change. Career progression in education is very important to teachers. This will enable me to contribute effectively to global pedagogical progress.