In Week 9, we discussed the article by Griffin (2002) "Using critical incidents to promote and assess reflective thinking in preservice teachers". This article triggered me to think back to the time when I graduated from Lakehead University to teach overseas. As I mentioned in my second post of this blog "My Journey", I taught ESL in Korea using a toolbox full of the knowledge and skills I learned in my teacher education program. However, based on my inexperience in the classroom - not being much more than a pre-service teacher, I quickly reverted back my own education experience as a kid, full of assumption and believes about what and how to teach. The article refers to this phenomenon as a 'latent philosophy of education" (Henry, 1999, p. 53). However, I wonder about the term "latent" because in my experience, you can spot a new teacher a mile away!
The main reason, I believe, this happened is because, during this time, I was a very "concrete thinker" as opposed to an "alert novice" which means that I was more concerned with, as the article explains, the 'how to' or 'what works' questions or the effective application of skills and technical knowledge in the classroom. As I reflect back on this time, there was also another barrier for me as a young teacher and that was "time". I was required to teach 30 contact hours with students ranging in age from 5 to 18 years of age which left me no chance to reflect upon my own practice. During these years oversees, I was more concerned with organizing my lessons, keeping track of attendance and motoring students' behavior in my classes. The 5 minutes afforded between classes and the limited prep-time did not adequately provide time for critical reflection. Problems or challenges which I identified were more often than not, addressed on the fly without being recorded for subsequent review. Over time, as I mentioned in my second post, this led me to feeling of frustration and disappointment because I knew there was more to education than just the transfer of information.
I posted the above picture because this is how I often felt teaching in the kind of environment described above. Deep down inside, I knew that sticking to the teacher-centered style of learning, although easier to manage the students, was a disservice to the students and to my own professional growth as a teacher.
