Being a teacher is a role I hold close to my heart. I love being able to connect with my students and their families while giving them the opportunity be the best they can be with the best learning opportunities possible.
I started out teaching in Early Childhood Education in a Daycare setting teaching Kindergarten while I finished high school. I loved every moment programming and teaching children by differentiating student learning opportunities.
Mentorship Programs
I think, that mentorship programs offer invaluable skill sets and working knowledge that you can pass down to others as you teach, co-teach and support through leading. The opportunity to solve real life problems that arise and encourage growth helps the mentor and the mentee as they develop a working relationship as co-learners.
Wouldn’t it be amazing if the Ministry of Education, Union Federations Affiliates, Parents of Students all work together to make the education system function at its highest capacity? This would honestly be my highest expectation to make our education system strong and over come systemic barriers.
That would be my vision for Education to make our curriculum shine we need to invest in a reflective process we see each team player held to account with high expectations and embracing a growth mindset of learning. Mentorship would be the best use of resources to bring in expertise and engaging capacity building among educational professionals.
Building Networking Opportunities
Teachers need to network, socialize and be celebrated. As I start my 20th year in teaching I know that I am embracing learning along side others like you who are learning through blogs. Networking helps us as teachers build trusting relationships and grow from them.
Here are some ideas to network:
- Social events in professional development
- Growing your social media PLN to build opportunies to connect
- Building capacity digitally with Blogs, Pod casts and engaging conversations
Engage Diverse workforces
No matter where you teach in the world we need to embrace diversity…there is nothing that can replace the perspectives, lived experiences that can be brought forward by being inclusive in our field. We live in a diverse world and we need to be representative and represent the cultural backgrounds and bring forth the knowledge from a global perspective today in age as we guide learning.
I really value diversity in education as a profession. When we are passionate educators we know that we bring in ideas, empower our learners and advocate for student voices to be heard and in order to do that we have to give opportunities to individual voice that are traditionally under represented in education to shine.
“In a completely rational society, the best of us would aspire to be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something less, because passing civilization along from one generations to the next ought to be the highest honour and the highest responsibility anyone could have” Lee Lacocca. This quote I hold close to my heart always through the journey of education as I continue to encourage, motivate and engage learners. No matter what differences we have that knowledge we pass to others on values, equity, diversity and human rights we should hold close to our hearts.
Reflection: Which concepts resonated with you from the blog and which will you apply to your daily reflection as a teacher?
Yours in Education,
Nilmini
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