Introduction
Teaching children is a noble profession that has existed since ancient times until the present days. At the core of this profession lie such qualities as love for children, patience, constant strive for improvement, and the ability to set an example and persuade. The task of a teacher is not only to provide knowledge but to educate children so that they grow up into good people. To fulfill this task, the teacher must have such skills as competent written and oral speech; the ability to interest pupils and knowledge of teaching methods. While the combination of all these skills allows teachers to constantly improve their qualifications, competent written speech remains the key component of teachers’ progress. This paper hypostatizes that improving my writing skills has helped me to move ahead with my aim of becoming a thoroughly competent elementary school teacher.
My Personal Ethos
Since elementary school, I have always wanted to become a teacher. In my opinion, a teacher is one of the most important people in every child’s life. It is the person who gives an impetus to development, the one who makes his or her pupils attentive, active, and interested. This is the person who, like no one else, understands his or her pupils and always supports them. All teachers want their pupils to be knowledgeable, because they want to see the result of their work.
The role of the teacher in the development of society has always been extremely important: after all, teachers passed on knowledge to the next generations. The task of the teacher in society has not changed now. Just like a millennium ago, teachers convey to their students a full range of skills and educate them as conscious, prosperous members of society. Teachers give the most important life lessons: lessons of kindness, decency, courage, love for their land, their Homeland.
In my work, I have elaborated some principles that help me to cope and to progress and which, I hope, will help me to reach my ultimate aim of becoming a thoroughly competent elementary school teacher. Initially, when I started working with children, it was strange to me why children perceive information poorly when everything is so simple and clear. It took me some time to realize that I was speaking and writing in complex sentences using complex vocabulary. Since that time my first principle has been to simplify, choosing simple sentence structure and vocabulary.
The second lesson I learned while taking my first pedagogical steps is that teaching should be sincere. After all, only through the prism of their worldviews, their value system, attitude to everything that happens around them, children are able to grasp knowledge. Therefore, my second principle is to be sincere and honest when speaking to children. I firmly believe that every child is talented, talented in his own way. I do not skimp on praise. To find success among many failures and make children proud of themselves is crucial in a teaching process. To let every child have faith in his abilities and instill in him or her the desire to learn is my third principle. In the classroom, it is necessary not only to form competencies, but also to educate a person. To teach a child to be persistent and courageous, able to overcome the difficulties of life is has become the fourth principle that I am guided by in my teaching activities today.
The Development of My Writing Skills
The last five weeks have been crucial for the development of my writing skills. I learned that the first skill required for a good teacher is conciseness, both in oral and written speech. Complex constructions may hinder children’s’ understanding of the essence of things, while using simple sentences and speech patterns boosts perception. Moreover, this writing skill lies in line with my personal ethos statement about simplification.
The second critical skill for a teacher is clever speech patterns and the use of appropriate grammatical constructions, idioms, and words. This helps to enrich the pupils’ vocabulary, to develop their language skills and make their written speech more grammatically correct. Moreover, this skill is important for developing engaging presentations and teaching materials. To enhance this skill, I often remember what language constructions I and my peers used as children and try to look for synonyms; I seek for words that may have different meanings in different contexts and could interest my pupils.
The third important writing skill is to be honest; the chances are that everything written by a teacher will be taken as undeniable truth, so a teacher must be careful what he or she writes. This skill runs in line with my personal ethos principle of being sincere in class, and I never write anything in which I am not sure. Furthermore, I use persuasive techniques in my writing to make children remember the materials. I often provide the children with examples that generate the feeling of pride or sympathy on the part of pupils so that they better remember the material discussed. Moreover, I use argumentative arguing to explain and alleviate doubts if there are any. Argumentative arguing in written speech is useful in class since it helps to develop critical thinking and pupils’ outlook.
Assessing my skill level, I believe it to be acceptable. The primary method of its development is writing many texts and stories where I set myself specific tasks. For example, I often try to write texts with a limited number of words or rewrite complex texts in a simple language. I try to use persuasive techniques to make my texts more credible and engaging. The strengths of my writing as of today are that it has become more concise and precise with a better choice of grammatical constructions and vocabulary suitable for elementary school children. The challenges lie with partial inability to choose appropriate persuasive techniques when making presentations to explain the material. Thus, I sometimes realize that I should have used some emotional examples instead of argumentative explanation which children may not understand.
I tend to see the challenges I face as growth opportunities so I do not give up. My personal qualities such as persistence and goal-orientation allow me to practice again and again without feeling boredom or tiredness. To better understand what type of argumentation I should use I often make two presentation, one emotional and the other argumentative, and see which suits best to a particular class.
Types of Writing I May Be Asked to Do in the Future
Persuasive and Argumentative writing are the two types I may be asked to do on the future. For persuasive writing emotional colouring of the text is important, so I would use emotive language and exaggeration, defending my position. As persuasive writing is often personal, I would speak about my experience and conclusions (Katz, 2018). Moreover, I would use stylistic devices such as simile, metaphors and epithets to make my writing more vivid and colorful. Persuasive argument relies on facts and reason, so here I would construct logical chains and use explanations to defend my point of view.
In five years, I hope to become a thoroughly competent elementary school teacher, able to instill knowledge and set an example to pupils. My skills will be invaluable on that path as only diligently working on my weaknesses I will be able to overcome them. My experience of working with children helped me to develop such skills as patience and persistence which are very important in a teacher’s job. I believe these skills will help me not to be frustrated if my pupils do not understand the material but try to explain it again and again.
Conclusion
Writing skills are an essential part of a teacher’s profession. Learning writing techniques such as simplification and the use of appropriate speech patterns, grammatical constructions and idioms helps to make a teacher’s writing more concise and easily understandable for pipuls. The use of persuasive and argumentative techniques allows a teacher to explain the material better in a vivid and picturesque way. I am quite sure that the writing skills I have acquired, combined with my personal traits and inclinations, will help me to become a respected and competent teacher. My practical work at school has provided me with an opportunity to test my skills and see at what I further have to work. I intend to make use of every opportunity to hone my newly acquired knowledge.
Reference
Katz, L. (2018). Critical thinking and persuasive writing for postgraduates. Bloomsbury Academic.