How my personality and experiences inform my teaching.

When I first began teaching I would often hear others in the profession say that teaching is an art. As with every art form there's no right or wrong way to apporach the task and accomplish the goal. You learn techniques and tools, you're given resources, but once you get into the classroom, you're really left to do the job on your own. You are lucky if you get a mentor teacher. And eventually you learn about a little thing called “teacher guilt”. Maybe not everybody experiences it, but it's experienced my many. Often, after a lesson, I find myself thinking that I could have done more. And then I begin contemplating the big question; "Why do I teach the way that I teach?" After all we also have so many options; there are infinitely many ways that we could approach a lesson or teach a topic. And ultimately we make the decisions and we live with those decisions. Every lesson has to be intentional, because if there is a bad lesson than there is a lost opportunity and wasted time.

Recently, I was asked to take a teacher personality test, as well as a learner preference test. Knowing oneself as a learner and pinpointing a teacher personality can answer some of those questions that we wrestle with as teachers. Why do I teach the way I do? Why do I choose one specific approach over another? I took the "Index of learning Styles Questionnaire" by Richard M. Felder and Barbara to understand myself as a learner. I scored a 5 in favor of reflective learner over active learner, 3 in favor of intuition over sensing, a 1 in favor of visual over verbal, and 5 in favor of sequential over global. I learn better if everything is taught in sequence, and I like to pick apart the details so I can understand better the whole picture better. Global learners struggle with the details because they cannot see the whole picture and the little intermediate steps get in the way of them seeing the big picture (Felder, 1993). Refective learners learn better through note taking, because they like to think through concepts thouroughly before applying them. Active learners learn as they apply concepts. In my class I try and appeal to both groups. As a refelctive learner myself, I think notetaking can give students an opportunity to think while the teacher lectures. We take notes periodically in class, but not always. Sometimes they are learning through doing activities in Desmos or simly through classroom discussion.

On the teacher personality test I scored as Introverted, Sensing, Thinking, and Judgement. This test can be located on metarasa.com adn is called Metarase (MMDI) Personailyt Test. I think the fact that I am teaching math is very specific to my personality. For one Math is sequential; they're often steps to solving a problem. As a sequential learner it makes sense that I would want to teach a subject that is more sequential in nature. Second, with math you're learning a lot of concepts that build on themselves. I prefer classes that are more conceptual in nature and require less memorization, and I prefer to teach math this way. A thinking teacher personality includes a person who thinks deeply about concepts and uses a more objected approach. I encourage students to understand concepts rather than memorize formulas.

Discovering yourself as a learner gives you the opportunity to see what other types of Learners are out there too. This nudges you in the direction of understanding and respecting all types of learners. As a sequential learner I can respect global learners who may struggle to master specific steps. These students need to be encouraged to see the "big picture" because only then will they understand the entire lesson. They may still struggle with the detailed steps and may require more patients from the teacher.

We also have to remember that we change, and our teaching may evolve. When I started out as a teacher I would usually gravitate toward rigitity, but now I've learned to be flexible when it comes to understanding the special circumstances of my students.

We have to be intentional as hard as it may be because our students are counting on us. So it begins with us being intentional about getting to know ourselves, and thinking about how others learn best. From there we try to accommodate all the different learners that we may meet in our classroom.

References:

Felder, R.M., and Barbara A. Soloman. (1993). Learning Styles and Strategies. Retrieved from https://www.engr.ncsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/drive/1WPAfj3j5o5OuJMiHorJ-lv6fON1C8kCN/styles.pdf.

Myers, Steve. (2020). Metarasa (MMDI) Personality Test. Team Technology. Retrieved from ]https://www.metarasa.com/mmdi/questionnaire/.

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