Today in our IT input, we were taught about the importance of our eportfolio and how essential reflection will be throughout our whole career. A great way to combine both is by making a blog which we all created together as a class! I’m so glad we did this as I would never have managed my self.
For our first blog post we were asked the question “why teaching?”. I have wanted to become a primary teacher for as long as remember, very cliché I know! I was that little girl who would line up all her dolls, make a fake register and pretend to be the teacher for hours on end never getting bored. On top of this, my experience at primary was amazing! I loved all my teachers, my classmates, my lessons and I was gutted when I had to grow up and go to high school. I hope to give my future classes the same experience I had and allow them to actually enjoy learning. After volunteering in a school for the last year it truly confirmed that teaching and Inspiring children is exactly what I want to be doing, it just felt so right. Witnessing a child struggling with something then helping them to understand and have that ‘lightbulb’ moment is one of the most rewarding feelings for me. I really felt like I played a big part in the children’s lives last year and the relationships I created I will never forget.
I am so excited to be at the beginning of my journey of becoming ‘Miss Edmond’ at the University of Dundee and I’m looking forward to the challenges that the next four years (and the rest of my career) holds for me. I am also happy to have the opportunity to use a blog for our eportfolio, I feel that already I am reflecting on my past and beginning to think about what i want to improve and achieve in the coming months, years and beyond.
Thanks for this post. Glad to see you are engaging with the eportfolio idea. So I have a question… You are looking forward to being Miss Edmond. But what do you think about teachers being called by their first names? I was always Mr Holme – but now, when I go in to school I encourage the students to introduce me as Richard. I think this is less formal and hopefully puts the staff and pupils more at ease. I also think it is more equitable. What do you think about this approach (there is probably research published on this somewhere)?
Hi Richard, thanks for reading and commenting! You’ve made a really good point and have made me truly question my reason behind wanting to be called ‘Miss Edmond’. In all honesty, I think it is because I have grown up calling every single teacher by their surname and never had one want to be called otherwise. It has been done for so long and I have always thought it was expected of teachers! I have also always thought that it gives some level of respect and authority to teachers, although this is probably not always the case. I guess it also gives a form of privacy now with modern day social media and how easy it is to find someone on facebook etc. However, in saying this, last year while voluteering at a local primary I much preferred being called Jacqueline it felt as though the children looked at me as more of a big sister that they could ask for help and chat to and I loved that. I felt like we were all more on the same level. It definitely does makes it more equitable, as you said. Either way wouldn’t really bother me, i’ll definitely give this some research as it is a very interesting topic.