Teaching Efficacy

During this past week we watched a video, and were given an article about teacher efficacy, that being the teacher's thoughts on their ability to promote learning in their classroom. This was an interesting topic as the findings that come from it, that teacher's with greater levels of efficacy leads to greater learning, has an impact on me as a student teacher. As a result of this study I want to ensure that I have a high level of teacher efficacy, and am also able to maintain during my years of teaching. Of course, this is easier said then done.

As a student teacher, going on to become a new teacher, I think one of the most important things to having high teacher efficacy is to not be too self-critical. As a new teacher, there are many new experiences that will be happening, and new lessons that have never been taught before to students. Some of these might not go well, however I think it's important to recognize that this is part of the growing process of being a teacher. Not everything will go perfectly to begin, and well not even as an experienced teacher will everything go as you want them to, however as a beginner it is definitely easier to feel down about your teaching abilities when things appear not be going well. Instead we can take these times as opportunities for ourselves to learn, to see what works well with a particular class, and to see how a specific lesson can be changed in the future to be more effective. Through this we will avoid the trap of feeling bad about our teaching, having low efficacy, and then thinking subsequent lessons aren't going well, and staying in that feeling of low efficacy.