Qualities And Contributes To Make My Personal Teacher Identity

“Primary teaching is an immensely complicated business. It involves the interplay of so many elements, including interpersonal, intellectual, physical, spiritual even aesthetic dimensions” (Richards, 2014, p.8). Primary teachers must demonstrate a variation of personal traits which children can therefore connect with and feel a sense of understanding between themselves and the teacher. Within this assignment the focus will be on the qualities and attributes which I as teacher aspire to develop in order to create my own personal teacher identity. The three attributes that will be discussed are; enthusiasm, organisation and patience, as I believe they are extremely important to be successful.

“Enthusiasm is behaviours or expressions that denote

According to Jerome Bruner “children should not be provided material in its final form but require to organise it for themselves” (Potter, 2007, p.9). The benefit of an enthusiastic teacher is that children instantly become interested in the lesson, therefore, support material is not required as communicating between is much easier when passionate about a subject. When teachers speak to pupils with high levels of enthusiasm and good humour they find the tone of the classroom is more encouraging which foster and support children’s self-confidence (Kyriacou, 2001, p.4) Children without any desire to take part or communicate with a teacher will result in the idea of discovery learning being unsuccessful as the children will solely depend on the teacher providing the answer. During my recent school placement I observed children working in groups with a teacher in order to solve a mathematical problem. The group were communicating ideas effectively and I believe this observation was clearly a result of how passionate the teacher was about the pupil’s questions and how well the teacher engaged with the learning taking place. According to the teacher standards, teacher should “encourage pupils to take a responsible and conscientious attitude to their own work and study” (Teacher Standards, 2011) The attribute of being enthusiastic is a huge starting point for children that have an unwilling attitude

Teachers must be aware of different children’s ability levels for them to successfully work in lessons. As well as this, teacher must know each child’s interests and personality which helps identify ways in which the child will work effectively. Whilst coming to the end of my time on placement, I started to gain a wider understanding of which children need more attention then others and which children were able to work more independently. Initially, I had never met any of these children, so I felt it was important to give the children as much attention as they required to build confidence and motivation. “High quality teaching thus explicitly builds on learners needs, as well as on high expectations and subject knowledge” (Pollard and Collins 2005, p.142). The quality of each child’s individual learning scopes around how well organised and adaptable a teacher can present