What personal skill or work habit have you struggled to improve?
A: Early in my student teaching experience I
often found it difficult to say “no.” I
would volunteer for anything and everything.
I guess I just saw so many jobs that needed to be done that I jumped in
and wanted to do them all. I soon saw
that this was taking time away from lesson planning, classroom management, and
individualized instruction. Now, instead
of trying to be all things to all people, I try to tackle those ancillary
duties that will have the greatest impact on student learning. I haven’t perfected that yet, but I’m much
better now at managing my time.
This is a good opportunity to highlight a task or chore that
popped up early in student teaching. It
would be appropriate to select something that everyone struggles with – time
management, lesson planning, classroom management – and ways you tried to
improve yourself as a result. Don’t
select something that is personal (“I have anger management issues with three
of my ex-boyfriends.”), but rather something that is universal to all teachers.
