Identity Crisis: The Changing Role of Teachers

by | Jan 18, 2014 | Blog, Entrepreneurial Learning

Are you a teacher?  Why?  What motivated you to choose a career working with students in schools?  If you answered yes to the first question then your second answer likely includes something like “I enjoy young people,” or maybe ‘”my parents were teachers,” or “I had an important teacher that changed my life.”  Some of you might also say something like “I was always a big science geek.” Of course enjoying students and school communities are an important part of having a successful teaching career, but what does it mean for your identity as a teacher if your content knowledge is less valuable.  Does that change your perception of the role of a teacher?  In the past teachers were the keepers of knowledge, tasked with the job of transferring their knowledge to others, so they could learn to repeat that information on tests, hopefully do a little critical thinking, and participate in a learning system that usually is less real then the real world.* Although this model of education is still replicated all over the world, there are some teachers and schools that are taking steps towards an inquiry-centered style of education, which instead of focusing on right answers focuses on questions and real life experiments (we’re taking very clear steps in this way in the Junior School at Punahou).  In this style of teaching identifying yourself as a science or humanities teacher becomes less relevant, although being able to see the relationship between the two subjects is critical. So what does this mean for the “apple on the desk” teacher who entered this profession because they always imagined...