Empty Vessel Existing to Convey Information

In coming into an alternative licensure program in which newbies to the field of education are thrust upon the teaching stage with little to no experience and then evaluated on every aspect of their performance, it should be pretty obvious that you are going to suck. Maybe not all the time - you may have some really good days and you might totally kill it during a particular lesson. And maybe not in all the same ways - your improvement will go up and down and cross itself back again on more than one occasion. But the hope in MTC is that there will be a steady progression towards becoming a better teacher, for as Dr. Monroe likes to say, being successful at school means continually growing as individuals.

Across most of my evaluations so far, the biggest thing that I need to work on right now coming into the program as a teacher with a little untrained prior experience, is my teaching personality. On the very first lesson I taught, my TEAM teacher said that many of the teaching basics are down in my case, which is very nice not to have to deal with. And then I was given an informal choice - when I am up there as the teacher in the room, I either need to be more authoritative or more fun. Currently I say good things and do more or less what a teacher should do, but I exist simply as an empty vessel for conveying information. I need to show more of my personality, or at least a uniform teaching personality, that can get the students more engaged and interested in being there for class.

So far I can tell that working on my teaching personality includes the following:

• Being engaging. Teaching should be a give and take with student participation, especially during sets, as they serve the purpose of getting students involved in the lesson and making the information relevant to their lives. This also includes making conversations with students while on duty posts (outside the school in the mornings for me). Some of my sets have been alright or even good, but I need to work on ways of working in more questions so that the students are running the set for me.
• Being enthusiastic: I don’t want to go the authoritative route because I feel it so clashes with my inner personality that I would become too much of a negative person for my liking (this is not the same thing as being strict in the beginning of the year, though). So I’ve decided to go more the FUN route. This means being (at times overly) excited about the class, period, material in order to get students excited about being here. The first comment that my TEAM teacher made about my true teaching personality coming out, is when I made a short impromptu infomercial-like comment of which brand of jelly I use to make my peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (blackberry jelly). The fun, quirky, and awkward moment aligns with my genuine self, I guess.
• Being LOUD: This does not necessarily mean all the time because I have been told that I can command the classroom with a quieter tone (a folksy, melodic tone, some might say). But it does mean pulling out loud bursts of energy occasionally throughout the lesson to keep students on their toes and engaged, and it also means being able to issue consequences with a decisive and strong tone, as to not appear meek. This has come up in my role plays again and again, as well - saying the right things but people not really believing them because there was no force behind the consequences.

I liked what my TEAM teacher said about this teaching personality thread already appearing in various forms on many of my evals: by the end of the summer, this is going to have changed into one of my strengths. That’s the goal, at least.