Teaching is one of the most challenging careers. The hours are long and you will encounter difficult situations. However, having the power to make a profound and lasting impact on students’ lives can be deeply rewarding. Before you continue on your journey to become a teacher, you should seek experiences that help you understand the teacher’s role and career paths available to you. As such, you will interview a teacher and reflect on your goals as a teacher candidate. This task will be an opportunity to engage with and reflect upon evidence-based practices and ways of understanding the role of a teacher specifically related to the John Hattie mindframes for visible learning.
A three-step developmental framework is used to support you through your preclinical and clinical experiences. This framework also helps to ensure you exit the program confident in your ability to meet the needs of your future students and school system. This assessment falls under step one of the three-step framework. In this task, you will engage in activities that will go toward preclinical hours of your Preclinical Experiences requirements.
In this task and others in this program, you will use Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle (Gibbs, 1988) as a framework to respond to observations and experiences. Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle encourages you to think systematically about the phases of an experience or activity, first describing the experience, then addressing how it made you feel, next evaluating and analyzing it, then drawing a conclusion, and finally considering how this experience will apply to your future practice.
A. Provide a web link to the content standards used in your state.
B. Interview (suggested length 30 minutes) one current K-12 teacher. Be sure that your interview questions allow you to answer the prompts below.
1. Submit a completed and signed “Interview Verification Form.”
Note: The attached “Suggested Interview Questions” may be used to help structure your interview.
Note: Ideally, the teacher being interviewed should teach the same content area and level as you would wish to teach.
C. Reflect on your interview by doing the following:
1. Description: Summarize the teacher’s views on the given topics:
• application of content standards used in your state
• internal and external influences that impact education at your school or district
• teacher identity and view of self (i.e., Hattie’s mindframes)
• ways teachers can continue to grow in their teaching practice or professional development
2. Feelings: Describe your feelings about the interview, including:
• how you felt before the interview
• how you felt during the interview
• how you think the teacher felt about the interview
3. Evaluation:
a. Describe how the interview did or did not align to what you had expected.
b. Describe something that went well during the interview.
c. Describe something that you would have done differently, based on your experience in the interview.
4. Analysis: Explain why you agree or disagree with the teacher’s views on the given topics:
• application of content standards used in your state
• internal and external influences that impact education at your school or district
• teacher identity and view of self (i.e., Hattie’s mindframes)
• ways teachers can continue to grow in their teaching practice or professional development
5. Conclusion:
a. Summarize what you learned from the interview.
i. Explain how what you learned from the interview has influenced your understanding of the role of a teacher.
b. If you were to conduct the interview again, describe what you would do differently to improve the interview experience.
6. Action:
a. Explain how one of Hattie’s mindframes supports teacher success.
b. Describe a personal strength and weakness related to the Hattie’s mindframe explained in part C6a.
c. Create a SMART goal you can work on that will support your development into a teacher.
i. Identify a professional development opportunity (i.e. workshop, training, or experience) available to you online or in your community that aligns with your SMART goal.
