{"id":878,"date":"2010-08-04T21:53:38","date_gmt":"2010-08-04T09:53:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/bioblog\/2010\/08\/what_made_me_a_teacher\/"},"modified":"2010-08-04T21:53:38","modified_gmt":"2010-08-04T09:53:38","slug":"what-made-me-a-teacher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/bioblog\/2010\/08\/what-made-me-a-teacher\/","title":{"rendered":"what made me a teacher"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><i>This is a re-posting of something I originally wrote for the <a href=\"http:\/\/talkingteaching.wordpress.com\/\">&#8216;other blog&#8217;<\/a>&nbsp;&#8211; I thought I&#8217;d publish it here too as part of the occasional ruminations by Marcus &amp; me on the subject of science teaching \ud83d\ude42<\/i><\/p>\n<p>Recently I&#8217;ve had occasion to reflect on the things that have made me the sort of teacher that I am. (Yes, I know there&#8217;s probably some grammatical issue with that sentence!) So I thought it might be good to write them down &#8211; for me, as a way of focusing my thinking, &amp; also because maybe it would elicit other points of view. So, here goes&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>I believe that behind every good teacher are a whole lot of other people. In my case the people on my list would include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>my parents, who encouraged all their children to follow their dreams &amp; who passed on their own sense of wonder &amp; curiosity about the world around us.<\/li>\n<li>the inspirational high-school teachers teachers who not only cemented my love for science but also made me think seriously about the prospect of becoming a teacher myself. Mrs White, Mr Withers, Mr East &#8211; I owe you a lot. And my own mother, a teacher herself.<\/li>\n<li>the then-Principal of Palmerston North Girls High School, Mrs Calvert: after I finished my PhD, I didn&#8217;t get a research scientist&#8217;s job straight away, so I began to look for alternatives. Mrs Calvert looked at a bright shiny new PhD graduate with no formal teaching experience, &amp; must have seen potential there because she offered me a job as a biology teacher. I did my teacher training on the job, extramurally, and settled into the career that I thought&nbsp;I&#8217;d left behind when I began my postgraduate studies.<\/li>\n<li>all the enormously supportive colleagues with whom I work, &amp; have worked in the past: fellow high-school teachers, academics &amp; the wonderful staff in our Teaching Development Unit, who let me bounce ideas around &amp; give advice on trying new things, supporting me in taking a few risks.<\/li>\n<li>my husband &amp; family &#8211; thanks, guys! &#8211; who&#8217;ve put up with long hours &amp; the seemingly endless piles of marking for quite a long time now.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>But ultimately, you can&#8217;t be a teacher without students. And I&#8217;ve been lucky to have students who don&#8217;t seem to have minded being guinea pigs (well, not too much!) when I&#8217;ve tried new things, &amp; who&#8217;ve been willing participants in the classroom. And that&#8217;s been wonderful, because to me the teacher is a learner too, &amp; while my students are (I hope) learning from me, I&#8217;m also learning from them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is a re-posting of something I originally wrote for the &#8216;other blog&#8217;&nbsp;&#8211; I thought I&#8217;d publish it here too as part of the occasional ruminations by Marcus &amp; me on the subject of science teaching \ud83d\ude42 Recently I&#8217;ve had occasion to reflect on the things that have made me the sort of teacher that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[22,31],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>what made me a teacher : BioBlog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/bioblog\/2010\/08\/what-made-me-a-teacher\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"what made me a teacher : BioBlog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This is a re-posting of something I originally wrote for the &#8216;other blog&#8217;&nbsp;&#8211; 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