Real Teaching # 35 (Reading Reaction)

In the article “Real Teaching”, the author discusses issues of what is considered teaching or not. There are several questions posed in the article that relates to the subject. One question is how can one determine whether an individual who is a teacher is actually teaching or not at a given moment? Since the author is mainly dealing with preschool age children, the answer to this question may be easier to develop than with older students. With young children, anything that one does in their presence could be categorized as teaching moment. At this age children are just beginning to develop not only basic academic knowledge, but social skills as well. The way a teacher interacts with other faculty, cleans up after him or herself, and says excuse after sneezing or burping is all being watched and possibly mimicked by preschool children. Another question posed in the article is whether teaching should be viewed as an accomplishment or an effort? Arguments for both were given in the text, however, no notion was given to the idea that the two could be intertwined. A concept for this third notion could be that when teaching, one puts forth effort to accomplish a classroom goal. Much planning occurs before the material is presented to the class. After the initial presentation, the teacher mostly likely incorporates several activities to reiterate material. Once a the full lesson has been taught, the teacher can look at class results and determine whether teaching the subject matter was a true accomplishment. Since the author of the text claims that the discussion and questions came about from a comical action, one could wonder how far fetch or close to home each question falls. Two questions come to mind: If possible, how could the questions mentioned in the article be used in determining which teachers are worth keeping or not? Since these notions are not used per se, in the hiring or firing of a teacher, are they really issues that should be of concern?