Samantha Blake

Dr. Haley

Edu 220 Principles of Teaching

September 3, 2019

Essential Question #1

Factors of teaching, including context, experience levels, age and gender, affect a

teachers work by influencing their impact on their students and as well as changing how teachers

view and survive the actual job of teaching. Impact is how they affect, influence and change their

students, but impact is not always good, it can be bad. The type of influence is dependent on the

teacher and their relationship with the student. Overall there are several different things that play

into how teachers do their work, and the main ones are experience, context, age and gender.

In general students preparing to be future teachers get lost in fantasy. Normally this

fantasy of how a classroom runs is created from playing with toys or family members in a

pretend classroom, and from being a teacher's assistant in classes. The reality of leading a

classroom, being in charge of all the lessons and classroom runnings is hard for some new

teachers to accept. This is a good example of how experience can affect how teachers work.

Teachers who have the fantasy view have no actual experience and therefore will do

things differently, good or bad. For example a school in Hilliard, OH had a gym teacher whose

kids did not liking to go to gym because they would just do workouts at stations, where they had

to read the instructions and they were not aloud to talk while doing it. The school then hired a

fresh out of college teacher, and during the first class the kids played a game where they were

still exercising but there was happy screaming, laughter, joy, and socializing. So just because the
first teacher had more experience, does not mean she was the better teacher of the two.

Sometimes it's better to have a teacher with the fantasy because they are coming into the school

with a positive attitude where they believe that they can make a difference and influence the

kids. These teachers can have no limits in their mind. Sadly, some of the more experienced

teachers do not have as big of expectations of their students or how much they can impact them,

because they become stuck in their habits. This is not necessarily true for every experienced

teacher though. Personally some of the teachers who have had the biggest impact has been the

experienced teacher who is updating their lessons per year based on student feedback, who are

constantly trying new things as they learn about them, like new technology and programs. While

some of the teachers who have little impact have been the inexperienced teacher who cannot

control the class, wants to be everyone's friend, and overall just do powerpoints and worksheets.

The amount a teacher’s experience affects their work is very dependent on how much

effort the teacher is willing to give. Also according to the Concerns of Teachers statistics for Self

Concern (whether they can survive the job) in Urban schools teachers with 0-3 years experience

scored a 36.9, 4-5 years scored a 31.6, and 6+ years scored a 30.4. In nonurban areas 0-3 years

scored a 36.9, 4-5 years scored a 33.8 and 6+ years scored a 29.0. As both decreased it shows

that more experience means more confidence and less self doubts. While experience had an

impact in this case, context did not as there wasn’t a big difference between urban and nonurban.

Context is not just the environment it can also be the students background, time, class

size, community, staff and more. This is important to how a teacher works because if a teacher

has no supplies, no time, too big of a class and no support, the amount of stress they will be

under will be bigger and the amount they can get done will de smaller. In comparison to a
teacher who has great supplies and a good time and class size, with support from their

community. However depending on the teacher context might not matter much, they might make

the best of what they have and persevere. Some teachers actually choose to go to the harder areas

because they feel like that is where they can make a difference with the kids, and those are the

kids that actually need them. This can be seen with the Concerns of Teachers, Impact, as new

teachers in urban context scored a 49.8, but those in nonurban context only scored a 45.0. These

teachers were concerned about making a bigger impact on their students which might be why

those choose an Urban context.

There are several other factors that matter as well, and can make an influence on a

teacher's work. For example, age and gender can make a difference. Some students might feel

like they can connect better with a younger teacher, or they might feel like they can get away

with more things. On the opposite side they might think they know better in certain areas, like

technology, compared to older teachers and therefore not respect them as much. Other things like

gender can make a difference too. Males can come across as more strict and with higher

expectations, while a female might come off as more comforting/sympathetic and helpful.

Appearance is part of it as men tend to be taller and more muscular than females and can then

give off a more intimidating presence. These are not always the case but are the typical case.

While there are several factors that can influence a teacher the biggest are experience,

context, age and gender. The main factor though is actually the teacher themselves. Experience

can go good or bad, and context can be used to your advantage or not. A teacher is the only

person that can control how their classroom is run, how they influence their students, and they

alone decide what they want to accomplish with their work.