Who are you as a teacher?

Today was such a great learning for me.

I was invited to sit in for one of the school's PETALS training session today and was so glad.

Of course there's work expected of me; to (i) draw up an action plan, (ii) formulate implementation strategy, and (iii) identify KPIs to measure the effectiveness of PETALS.

It was certainly an eye-opener for me. Though I've always talked about PETALS to the schools, today I gained an in-depth understanding, including sitting through a series of presentation of lesson plans by teachers and joining the rest of the teachers in providing feedback and critique of actual lesson plans.

It was even better for me when the facilitator brought out the chart on "Thinking about Pedagogy".



It reminds me of Gregory Bateson's "Logical Level of Change" that we shared extensively in our seminars and workshops for educators. Refresher: Identity > Values and Beliefs > Strategies and Capabilities > Behaviors and Actions > Environment and Outcomes.

It is first, understanding who you are as a teacher. This is exactly what Parker Palmer discussed in his book, "Courage to Teach", where you are what you teach. This is so in line with Gregory Bateson's model, where we talked about "Identity" - who you are.

Following the "Identity" is the beliefs, values, theories and principles that underpins your pedagogy. Again, this is in line with Bateson's "Values/Beliefs" + "Strategies/Capabilities".

At this point, you would enact and evaluate ("Behaviors and Actions") your pedagogy based on your "Values/Beliefs" + "Strategies/Capabilities".

After that, you would develop your pedagogy, where I take it to mean you check against your "Outcomes" to determine if your pedagogy is sound.

Here, I believe there are a few fundamental principles that we need to think about:
(1) Who you are determines how you teach.
(2) What beliefs and values you have and what theories and principles you subscribe to will shape the way you teach.
(3) What knowledge, skills, and attitudes you have will determine how your pedagogy will be.

This is where I would like to make the connection of the principles to what we do:
Principles (1) & (2): if all our teachers write their own personal mission statement and write down their values and how it look like, it allows them to better understand themselves.

Principle (3): is where we need to know two things. One is what are our teachers training needs (LNA). The other, I found out today, is what kind of teaching skills and style does that teacher have?

And this, the TPI can help provide us with five perspectives. Check it out here.