Responses Needed - 8 Hours

   To use an old saying, an intentional teacher must “eat, sleep, and breathe” teaching. Previous experience both as a student and as a teacher has shown me that this overly simplified definition is exactly what the most effective teachers do.

            To be an intentional teacher, one must first receive the education and training that culminates in certification. The path, however, does not end there. Intentionality also includes such traits as engaging in independent personal development, knowing and teaching accordingly to the culture and community of a particular setting, developing a research-based approach to ensuring student success, and compiling and monitoring data in order to analyze progress and evaluate success.  These traits combine to promote in teachers a sense of their own ability to empower students to learn and succeed.

            Simply put, we as teachers must continually educate ourselves in order to best educate our students. Stagnant teachers, teachers who never evolve, never read up on current educational research findings, never adjust classroom techniques, cease to be effective teachers. As a high school teacher, I find that my intentionality must include a constant awareness of what will be expected of my students in their lives after graduation, whether that be a postsecondary environment or the workforce. I must keep myself abreast of the knowledge and skills my students will need to be successful after leaving high school, and I must implement practices into my classroom that will enable them to meet those expectations.

            “Research + Common Sense = Effective teaching” is especially meaningful for me this year. I am an English teacher and am working at a new school. The school is extremely small; each subject has one teacher for all of the secondary students; each grade consists of only one class of students. The person who taught English before me concentrated solely on Literature to the point of excluding any grammatical instruction, and this person taught there for six years. As a result, even my brightest students are not good writers. While research tells me that in order to be the best writer possible, one must understand the grammatical elements involved in constructing sentences and paragraphs, I am well aware that I simply do not have enough time with my Seniors and Juniors to go back and teach what they should have already learned. Therefore, my common sense has taken over, and instead, I am teaching them the highlights of what I know they most need in order to improve their writing. I hope that by combining my own common sense through the realistic examination of the time I have with my students and the research-based most important elements of writing, I can effectively help these students elevate their writing skills as much as possible.