Subject:

Anlisis en la prctica de la enseanza

del idioma Ingls

Teacher:

Marcelina Pantoja Flores

Student:

Marlene Guadalupe Serrano Prez

Values and Identity- Response Paper

Date: Friday November 04, 2016
NUA: 810285

Values and Identity

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influences stops. This quote
was written by Henry Adams an American historian, even though this was written
many years ago, I do not believe it is obsolete nor that is needs an update or
something. Once we become teachers it is like we start a chain with our work, we
teach someone and this someone teaches someone else and someone else and
someone else, this is why we will never know where our influence stops. The way
we teach, live and perform our profession will always influence our students; either
in a good or in a bad bay, but they will always observe what we are doing.
I guess that when we have a job as teachers, it is something like having a 24/7 job
the 365 days of the year, this is one of the reasons why we influence our students
and the other one is that we need to be careful with our actions and behaviors. We
need to pay real attention to our values and identity, so our students can have a
good model and good influence. Our values and identify will define us as teachers
and will help us to carry and perform a good job.
We can define Values as a life style, as a life-style priorities, Values are a
motivational construct. They refer to the desirable goals people strive to attain
(Schwartz, 1992) and it is because values are the ones that support and lead all
the decisions we take, values express what is important in our life. Therefore we
need to live according to our values our life as teachers, as professionals and as
humans.
I think we need to live our values all the time, in school and out of school. Many
people may believe that once they are out of school they can do whatever they
want and that nobody should judge them for what they do. Somehow they are right,
we are teachers, but once we finish school hours we are just like anybody else;
however, once we became teachers we become public figures as well, which mean
your students and people will be watching what you do. I do not mean we need to
be scare or that we need to hide to live our normal life, I am just saying that we
need to be careful and take care of our role as teachers. As I mentioned before our

actions will influence our students and also our actions will talk about who we are
and about our values, so we can transmit them to our students.
According to Brady, L. (2011) there is a problematic all the school and society face,
it is the challenge to teach values. Teaching values is not easy, Brady states that
teachers need to create a warm and supportive classroom atmosphere, so
students can feel free to express what they think, feel, and believe. Also the
teacher needs to be tolerant to receive different opinions. I totally agree with this
author, I have seen how difficult it is to teach values to students mostly teenagers, I
think it is hard because many times they do not receive any education or discipline
at home, so they are not used to have values and follow rule.
Therefore, we as teachers need to create this warm atmosphere so we can make
the students feel comfortable with us and the rest of the class. Once we build the
rapport between teacher students we can start our labor teaching values, it goes
from respecting their classmates school supplies, to helping each other when
necessary. It is really important we transmit values to our students, so they can be
better.
In my opinion there is something I think will always be an issue; it is the students
background. Students are in school about five hours a day, and they spend the rest
of the day at home or somewhere else, here is where the problem emerges I think
that even though teachers try really hard to teach values to students, if they go
back home and the people there do the opposite our work may be a waste of time.
For this, I believe that teaching values is not a task only for the teachers, but also
for the parents. If parents work together with teachers and students I believe that
something really good can result from it and students will be benefited from it.
In the other hand we have identity, according to Walkington, (2005) Teacher
identity is based on the main beliefs a person has about teaching and being a
teacher; beliefs that are continuously formed and reformed through experience.
Basically, identity is finding or defining who you are as a teacher, as Walkington
stated all the identity and personality will be linked to the values one has and it is
something that is in continuous change and growth. I do believe that our identity

and beliefs will be in constant change and it is according to what we live or our
experience. For instance, I work at a university and I am considered as one of the
strictest English teacher in the school. I believe I need to be like that to keep
control of the students and at the same time it is good for them, because in this
way they work better, they seem to work better under pressure. In contrast, when I
worked at a kindergarten I was nothing like that, my identity was quite different. I
used to be really patient, caring, sweet and playful; I know I had to deal with little
children and that honey would work better than vinegar. My identity at that time
was about being a friend for children to support them and help them in their
learning process.
So, I believe identity changes according to the context one is living. Mayer, (1999)
said that It is possible to become an expert practitioner by actually doing the job,
by performing the skills, but true professional teaching involved another dimension,
an intellectual dimension. What Mayer expressed in these words is that it does not
matter is we are not experts, if does not matter of we are perfect teachers, he said
that we can become experts by practice, but also by studying to develop our
intellectual dimension.
I totally agree with this author, maybe I was not a good teacher, it was very difficult
for me to deal with classroom manager when I started working; however, with the
time I have been dealing with the students, the experience I have acquired,
information I have read and advices I have received I think I am better now. My
identity was different to now, and it did not change from one day to another. I t was
something I got through all the experience, practice and time.
To conclude, I consider we need to take in account our values and identity all the
time, it is because they define who we are and what we do is linked to them as
well. Values and identity work together for a specific purpose and it is to be a better
person and teacher. I think we should never leave neither of them aside because
they lead our path or life and without them we would be lost and without a purpose.
It is also very important we cultivate those in our students, because we as teachers

play an important role on the students life, and this role is a guide not only in
teaching them English, but also about being a better person.

References

Brady, L. (2011). Teacher Values and Relationship: Factors in Values Education. Australian
Journal of Teacher Education, 36(2). http://dx.doi.org/10.14221/ajte.2011v36n2.5
Mayer, D. (1999) Building teaching identities: implications for pre-service teacher
education, paper presented to the Australian Association for Research in Education,
Melbourne.
Schwartz, S. H. (1992). Universals in the content and structure of values: Theory and
empirical tests in 20 countries. In M. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social
psychology (Vol. 25) (pp. 1-65). New York: Academic Press.
Walkington, J. (2005) Becoming a teacher: encouraging development of teacher identity
through reflective practice. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education. Retrieved from:
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.550.2417&rep=rep1&type=pdf