Chapter 2a & 2b: Professional Responsibilities of Teachers of Young Adolescents

2a
The beginning of Chapter 2 talks about all of the different responsibilities you will have as a middle school teacher. You are a decision maker for your classroom, you are committed to your students and your job, and you also have responsibility over your instructional methods as well as various other activities outside of the normal teaching environment. There is a lot of planning, implementing, reflecting, and responsibility that goes along with being a middle school teacher especially. You have to think not only about what you need to do to keep your students safe and learning, but also about what you need to do as a professional and as a person. I think that there is much more to consider and much more that goes into being a middle school teacher than an elementary teacher. The students are beginning to get more involved and starting to try and figure out who they are. As a middle school teacher you spend a good amount of time with the students and you are a huge part of their lives. It is much more than just teaching them in the classroom setting. You have to become interested in their interests and involved in their school related activities.

2b
While the beginning of chapter 2 discusses more about what you need to do for your students outside the classroom the second half focuses on what you need to focus on personally to be a good teacher. It starts with a long list of 22 different qualities that a teacher needs to possess in order to be effective. This list includes things like good communication skills, modeling appropriate behavior, being nondiscriminatory, and having a good sense of humor. Looking at all of these qualities a middle school teacher is supposed to posses is a seemingly impossible task if you ask me. I think that if you break down the list and look at one thing at a time you realize that we are already conditioned as future educators to possess some of these qualities. Then the list seems to get a little shorter. Then you realize some of the qualities describe who you are anyways, and the list gets even shorter. Next you realize that as long as you actively acknowledge each of these qualities an effective middle school teacher should possess than you can work on refining them throughout your career. This makes the rest of the chapter that talks about technology and field trips seem like a piece of cake in the grand scheme of things.