Awakening: The Beginning of a Teaching Journey

I graduated from the National Institute of Education (NIE) in 2022, with English and English Literature as my curriculum subjects. I am now a Beginning Teacher in a neighbourhood secondary school with one year of experience. I teach mostly students in the Normal (Academic) stream or G2 level.

Teacher Identity

One of the first professions, or rather roles, known to a child would be that of a teacher. Influenced by the time spent being a student in school, the role was all too familiar to me. It was evident in my role-playing activities as a nine-year-old, assuming the role of a teacher obsessed with getting his students to complete their corrections to the high standards I upheld. Lessons often took place in void decks or neighbourhood common areas with playmates from the vicinity. It was generally distant memory, except for something someone quipped on the sidelines: “He’s not even good at his studies, yet he wants to teach?” This stayed. 

While my interest for teaching was not extinguished, what was spoken left uncertainty and disbelief in my choice of career. Building competency in my subject area, while also a never-ending pursuit, is one that can be progressively accomplished as there is a set of learning outcomes I could work towards. Dispositions, beliefs and attributes that a teacher should possess, on the other hand, were aspects that I struggled with. To put it more concisely, my teacher identity was in crisis.

Teaching Philosophy

It will be inaccurate to claim that my teacher identity is now clearly defined. However, modules like Professional Practice & Inquiry (PPI) and The Meranti Project have given me ample opportunities and guided me as I searched for my bearings and convinced myself that I too can be a dutiful teacher.  I was able to document and chart my progress while I searched and explored. One year of teaching in school and conversations with colleagues illuminated my blind spots and made me reconsider certain long-held beliefs and assumptions of the profession.

One example was my perception that teachers should be extroverts and leaders who can rally their students and persuasively guide them towards success. I slowly realised on my journey that this is not a certainty. I remember one of my professors getting us to do the MBTI personality indicator created by Isabel Myers and Katharine Briggs. It was not a surprise that within my class of student teachers, there was a myriad of personalities. Not all of us were that extroverted thinker that was generally associated to be a good teacher. Some of us were intuitive introverts. So, is there a personality that teachers should ideally possess? Are there people who are predisposed to be teachers?

Fortunately, my professor conducted the lesson with a goal in mind. It was to convince us that regardless of personality and traits, every individual is an indispensable teacher. He pointed out that  teachers of a variety of personality types are needed to cater to the entire spectrum of students in school. That really helped to clear some of the doubts I had about being a ‘natural’ teacher. Other aspects that were less clear was what kind of a teacher should I develop or aspire to be. Since then, it has been a continuous process of looking.

Now, as I think about my teaching philosophy, I can immediately come up with a few, greatly influenced by the challenges I faced this year in school and by the students under my guidance. As I went back to review those I have listed in my Digital Portfolio, I realised that they were different from what I have in mind now. Trying to resolve the inconsistency, I realised that they were all in fact undergirded by the common aim of developing my students to be better people – student-oriented. With some experience under my belt now, I have the following revisions to make:

Do more than teach right from wrong

Most teachers should not find it difficult to agree that out students know what is right. This may apply less to the academic side of things, but it should be applicable to displaying appropriate behaviour and making wise decisions. Students know that they need to keep their phone during lessons. They know that they should not consume food and drink outside the canteen. They also know that they should complete their homework before coming to class. We know our students know these, but they continue to act on the contrary despite their knowledge. Do we need to reteach them? 

I feel that it is more important now than ever before to be able to explicate to our students why such rules should be followed and why it is in everyone’s benefit to follow them. When they break the rule, we rationalize to them the importance of adhering to such rules and get them to not repeat the mistake. When they break the rules again, we find out what is stopping them from following the rules and help them do what is required. This process does not end. It no doubt requires patience, time, and effort. In fact, it may be more draining for a teacher when compared to delivering a lesson.

I think it is effort well spent as students need to learn the thought processes behind making good decisions as they navigate through is increasingly complex word where more options are opening up every day. While we should adhere to the rule that mobile phones are not be used in a school, should its use be allowed when students are trying to access academic resources that are not whitelisted on their learning devices? Should they use it when they are retrieving their one-time-password for their academic email account? These are decisions we hope our students are able to come to independently, and it is only possible when we model the thinking processes for them.

Curate and create experiences

As an English teacher, I believe in using authentic materials for lessons and assessment as much as possible. I can now easily search for a text involving personal response on the internet. I can also just as easily search for the functions of relative pronouns and deliver a lesson based on the content found. If I can access such resources on the internet, so can my students in class. Knowledge and content have lost much of its value in this sense. 

What I can do as a teacher is to use my competency in the curriculum to pick the most appropriate resource and to use my knowledge of my student profiles to adapt the resources for my class. With the pedagogies such of differentiated instruction, the resources found can be chunked, contextualized and tiered before delivering it to students. This maximises the impact created by the resource and makes time spent in the classroom worthwhile for students, making the largest impact with the limited resources at hand, such as time. 

This goes beyond the academic classroom. In areas such as co-curriculum activities, there are ample opportunities to develop and expose our students to the practices and demands of other organisations. Nevertheless, there is always limited time. Curating the most beneficial opportunities pitched at the appropriate level is necessary to develop our students according to the targeted attributes and dispositions. As opportunities are aplenty and time is limited, picking the right ones becomes very important.

Be a perpetual source of hope 

Having participated in my second promotion meeting, it has deepened my conviction to providing hope to my students. As teachers, majority of us are from families that are able to provide support, emotionally and financially, and it allowed us to flourish academically, opening doors to opportunities like being able to teach. Some of our students are not as lucky.

Our students come from a variety of background, having permissive parents, lacking financial support, and facing extenuating circumstances. They do not come from a background that gives them a vantage point to envision a desirable future. I believe teachers need to continue to give hope regardless of the challenges they may face. Our students must have the confidence that under our mentoring, they will be able to move beyond their predicament and escape the cycle.

While our foci as teachers may change, and while we may look at things a little differently from time to time, we know we are in the right direction when we have benefiting our students at the heart. The journey of developing a sound teacher identity is more meandering and convoluted than straight-forward and linear; nevertheless, as long as we grow and help our students grow, this is all that matters.

Learning for my students and I

Life-long learning has been a mantra that we are all now familiar with. As teachers, it is not possible to remain in the profession if we do not practice life-long learning. Just look at how personal learning devices have revolutionised teaching in a classroom. From distributing digital worksheets to providing feedback digitally, we have familiarised ourselves with new platforms and tools we were once foreign to. However, this is not enough. To truly harness the potential of technology’s affordances, we need learn deep – life-deep learning. Knowing how to do something is no longer as valuable as how it used to be. Knowing how to do something well, having deep knowledge is what is valuable.  

The same applies to reflection. Having gone through the 16-month Postgraduate Diploma in Education (Secondary) (General) at the National Institute of Education (NIE), the reflective model is all too familiar. As teacher, it is second nature to reflect about the lesson when you step out of the classroom. We think about how classroom management can be improved, how can we better structure the lesson, are there alternative ways to deliver the lesson that we have not considered. Given our packed schedules, it is effective to use pockets of time to reflect on and plan for lessons. However, without going deep, a lot of useful data is lost when they are not tracked. 

It is possible to be a teacher who does not think deeply about his/her practices, but that would mean sacrificing opportunities for growth. Similarly, it goes back to benefiting our students. We will have plenty of practice being a teacher if we continue to pursue this career, but practice alone does not make us better teachers. It is the thought that we put into our every decision that makes us better teachers. How can we construct better questions to truly target the intended content? How can we ensure that our questions give us the necessary data to make modifications to the way we teach? How can we develop our students to ask quality questions beyond simple ‘remember’ questions? These cannot be done along the corridors as we walk back to the staffroom. Conscious effort and emphasis must be dedicated to it.  

Being fluent with the concept of reflecting has allowed for accelerated growth as a beginning teacher. 

Growth and development

Being fluent with the concept of reflecting has allowed for accelerated growth as a beginning teacher. This is a luxury that I have been afforded during my practicum. During practicum, when my only responsibility was to coordinate with my cooperating teachers (CT) and co-teach or independently teach the classes, I was able to fully immerse myself in improving my classroom practices. This emersion in the planning and executing process, coupled with reflection, made the post-lesson conversations with my CTs more productive as my reflections allowed my CTs to be privy to my areas of struggle and offer advice and suggestions. After they had given feedback, I returned to reflecting a second time, considering their precious input and my readiness to apply their suggestions in my upcoming lesson.

Moreover, I extended this practice of engaging in an in-depth reflection for every lesson I conducted, including the ones that were not officially observed. This allowed me to keep track my progress by looking at my reflection. I was also able to avoid the pitfalls as the problems and issues have all been documented. Doing this for a full term left me with a rich resource that I have looked back upon for insights that were gleaned but forgotten.

Final thoughts and acknowledgements

As time becomes scarcer as the transition from a beginning teacher to a full-fledged teacher occurs, I recognise that I will need to priortise my areas of focus. Armed with a general foundation of the skills and dispositions a teacher should possess, I now have a clearer understanding of what I am lacking. As a result, I will need to focus on the pressing areas that will make the greatest difference in my teaching. That for me is still very much classroom management for some particulars student profiles. To go about doing so, observing lessons of fellow teachers who are successful at managing such students is a good approach. Taking the lessons learnt, applying them in my classroom, and going through the reflective cycle will allow me to truly benefit and continuously develop my teacher identity and learning from others.

Being given this opportunity to contribute a chapter for this PPI book is a milestone on my journey to becoming a full-fledged teacher. I would like to thank my CTs and NIE supervisor during practicum for their constant feedback that enriched my reflection. In addition, I also appreciate my principals and colleagues for their constant support during my first year. Most importantly, I want to thank my students for growing developing with me and allowing me to observe and assess my pedagogies and practices. Lastly, I deeply appreciate the PPI team in NIE for this invitation as it has given me a chance for reflection and introspection at this poignant juncture, allowing me a acknowledge the progress I have made thus far and further deepening my conviction to teach.