Educators contribute to the profession.
Throughout my teaching degree, I have engaged in a lot of professional development, as well as collaborating with other teachers. Teaching is not a solitary profession, and building working relationships with other teachers and staff will do nothing but help make work easier.
I’ve built relationships with my coaching teachers and the rest of the staff at the schools I’ve done my practicums at, as well as with the other people in the teaching program. All these connections I’ve made will be more than helpful in my first years as a teacher, because these are all people who I can reach out to when I need help or resources. At the same time, I am there for them as well, for bouncing around ideas or sharing resources or collaborating on a lesson.
The community that I have found both with the others in the teaching program and with my colleagues at the schools I’ve been at has been amazing. They’ve really shown me that, despite teaching itself being a solitary thing most of the time, the teaching profession as a whole is a collaborative effort. There are so many ways that you can help improve your school community, from collaboration on lessons or learning plans, to sharing resources, to helping implement changes and new ideas in the school itself.
Teaching is something that works better when people work together, and, as a new teacher, while I don’t have a lot in terms of experience or resources to offer, I do have new, fresh perspective and outlook that I can bring. Sometimes mixing things up or bringing in something new can help refresh an environment and shake things up, which can also be helpful in giving students new perspectives and ways to learn that may better suit their learning needs.