Reflect on your personal development of competencies as you train to become a teacher

Professional Practice

Leadership and Management

Personal Effectiveness

Throughout this first year in NIE, we have been taught in several modules on the importance of professional practice, leadership and management and personal effectiveness as a teacher. Being professional means we take our job seriously, knowing the responsibilities and requirements of our job scope as a teacher. Putting it into practice is an additional step which requires constant effort in taking pride in what we do and the duties we are meant to carry out. How we see ourselves as professionals impact on how to then take to the tasks given or placed before us. We will then take pride in doing what we have been trained or learned to do in NIE. For example, discerning the kinds of advice we give to students based on career options, CCA management or studies reflect on our professional practice. Personal opinions that are unethical or detrimental to a positive development are not good reflections of professional practice.

This competency ties in together with leadership and management as we embark on our career as teachers. I feel that this transit from student to teacher must be undertaken seriously, allowing ourselves to take on initiatives and responsibility in managing our colleagues among us as well as students. This process may be slow and reap little results at first. We might even have to handle more stress or deal with irrelevant matters involving paperwork. Having the leadership to spark changes or propel innovations and take up roles in our school is a competency that would reflect well on us. Thus thinking about how we can showcase our leadership and management in our future school can start the ball rolling in getting us to think different and work on challenges. Its about a strong voice making an impact, a difference in a student. This idea of Teacher Leadership is a new shift towards enabling, equipping a teacher with sometime more than just books and content and subjects. 

Personal effectiveness is an individual aspect which I believe holds strongly on how much the individual aims on being an effective teacher. If the mindset is bent on simply teaching subjects and getting students to pass exams, the level of effectiveness may only be limited. But to expand beyond this and strive to personally put in the effort to understand students, or try out different methods of teaching, we as individual practice personal effectiveness and this in turn would enhance and enable us to teach better.