Self-Portrait: Myself as Teacher

Betsy Gitelle
Professor Joy Blom
ENGL 571
September 16, 2010


As a candidate in the MAT program at Montclair State University, I have been asked to contemplate the Center of Pedagogy’s Portrait of a Teacher on a number of occasions. The first time was for my admissions essay, and subsequently I was asked to reflect on the portrait in specific classes -- learning theories, the social dynamics of teaching and learning, teaching writing to basic writers, and, most recently, in a class about the sociocultural approach to education. Throughout my experience at Montclair State, I have been reminded that a key to learning is to see how an overarching idea or construct can effect an entire mode of inquiry. I think that the Portrait is supposed to create that overarching context for us as we become teachers. When I think of how to construct my own portrait, I see that I need to incorporate my educational philosophy with the best practices from my content area, English, while keeping myself as  practitioner always in focus – for better or for worse.


From the educational philosophy perspective, a year into the program, on the continuum from traditionalism to constructivism, my philosophy is rooted on the extreme end of social constructivism. I definitely believe in activating students’ prior knowledge, building scaffolds, creating learning communities, encouraging metacognitive awareness, and connecting learning to real-world experiences.  I am very interested in how emotions and self-awareness affect learning. My educational philosophy makes me aspire to be more of a “verb” than a “noun” as a teacher, more tied to process than to product.


As an “English Major”  I have often thought about what it means to create a portrait of a teacher, and the best way to construct one. Although I do admire and appreciate each and every one of the twelve items that comprises COP’s Portrait of a Teacher, and see that the more I study these items, the more they reveal, a question about form persists:  Is a list of  items adequate? What do we call the items? How do we know what is an appropriate number of items to include? Is each item a standard, a strand, characteristic, a call to action, or all of these?  How do we create a portrait that is at once comprehensive, accessible, multi-faceted and dynamic? Most importantly, how do we create a portrait that evolves (I am now unable to push away the thought of Wilde’s “Portrait of Dorian Gray”) and that can accommodate change and growth? Should the portrait be expressed in a multimodal way, or is a textual description adequate?


Now, for this class, we are asked, finally, to write our own portrait, presumably to help us visualize and imagine the very best kind of teacher we can be, so we can better become that teacher. I think I like this idea because it gives you a framework for making decisions and prioritizing – if you know what the organizing principle is – the mission or the mantra, you can fit the details in and decide what to do at any given moment. My portrait thus becomes a list of intentions or promises to myself, and the overarching construct would be reciprocity: give and take. I love the idea of reciprocity because it suggests a movement back and forth, a respectful balance. It suggests teaching as learning and learning as teaching. 


My portrait becomes a list of intentions to become the best reciprocator I can be – and here is the beginning of the list – not yet prioritized, and raw. My self portrait is based on a  set of pledges to myself to be and to become the best possible partner in reciprocal, iterative relationships. My portrait is a list of imperatives:

• I will try to be honest in all that I do.
• I will try to be courageous and take the high road when I have a choice.
• I will try to be considerate of others’ needs and expectations.
• I will try to maintain my boundaries – physically, socially, emotionally.
• I will try to keep my students’ best interest at heart.
• I will try to get to know each student, their family, their community.
• I will try to be aware of my biases and unpack them.
• I will try to be inclusive.
• I will try to stay present in the moment.
• I will try to find the strength in each student.
• I will try to find the unique qualities of each student.
• I will try to see each student’s unique qualities as essential to our group.
• I will try to demonstrate how individual and group work work together.
• I will try to work with my students to make community goals and personal goals.
• I will try to understand how each relationship works within the context of the classroom, and our widening spheres of the school, the community, the county, the state, our country, our continent, our world.
• I will try to explain why learning about the world is useful and makes life better.
• I will try to show how being honest and open can simplify life and make it better.
• I will try to be clear about my expectations.
• I will try to be clear about maintaining high standards.
• I will know the scope of the content area I am teaching.
• I will do my homework on time.
• I will try to keep an open mind.
• I will try to stay humble.
• I will try to be aware of my cognitive, emotional, and physical states.
• I will try to model good behavior.
• I will try to model my own learning experience.
• I will engage each student as an ambassador to their world.
• I will try to engage each student as being valuable to me.
• When I make mistakes I will try to learn from them.
• When I make mistakes, I will ask my students to help me learn from them.
• I will try to distribute the power in the class.
• I will use assessment tools to help students learn to learn.
• I will understand the purpose and goal of each instructional moment.
• I will make the classroom community safe and nurturing.
• I will stay true to distinguishing what is a privilege and what is a right.
• I will allow choice wherever there is room for choice.
• I will help students understand their role as thinkers and communicators.
• I will use technology in an appropriate and efficient way.
• I will try to stay current in my field.
• I will collaborate with other teachers and administrators to help each student become the best he can be.
• I will keep revising my list of I wills.

And, I will keep revising my self portrait.