My self-contract speaks of my fear of failure. I believe a huge influence of not wanting to fail is a product of my socio-cultural environment growing up. My parents were teachers and the expectations for a teacher’s kid to succeed were huge in my small community. I always felt I was being watched and any failures of mine would somehow be correlated to my parent’s ability to teach ... and I could not fail for fear of them looking like poor teachers. Teacher’s kids just simply weren’t supposed to fail at anything. I was also raised in a women’s revolution and it made me aware of the abilities in every single person, despite what society thinks they can and cannot achieve. My contract reflects this by speaking to best matching learning opportunities in a heterogeneous setting and fostering student success within themselves socially, emotionally, academically and physically.
After learning about personality types and re-reading my self-contract it is also not difficult to see my NF personality emerge through my writing. My personal goal involved further education. The Mamchur text stated that further learning often provides a sense of balance for the NF personality type and is the reason why NF’s are attracted to education (pg 85). This reminds me of when I casually mentioned to my brother that I am the only one in my immediate family who doesn’t have a master’s degree. He replied that cumulatively speaking, I have taken more schooling than anyone in the family and that if I had focused on one area from the beginning I would have completed a doctorate many years ago. I laughed because this is absolutely true, but I also wouldn’t have changed any of my education paths had I been given the opportunity to do it all over again. My passion for learning did not take me on a straight line. This may be seen as a negative for some NT types who may be critical of such a non-lineal pursuit and it may be seen as incompetence (p. 86). Incidentally, my brother is an NT, and his criticism came through in his tone of voice, although I know he was just offering his own critical analysis. I take pride in the fact that I am a Jack of all trades and a master of none because as Mamchur says for NF’s, “any one place is not the place; it is only a step closer to the true place of self-actualization (pg 84). Knowing a little bit about many things of which to scaffold my experiences is more important to me than becoming an expert in one specific knowledge area. My self-contract also shows my biased towards wanting my students to achieve their own “self-actualization.” This is a strong value of the NF temperament whose prime value in education is for growth of identity and integrity (pg 89).
I believe my personality type strongly supports the socio-cultural theory which theorizes that students learn best in a social setting interacting with their peers and communicating with others (Auger & Rich, 2007, pg. 24-25). Mamchur states that NF’s favour using group projects, interaction, discussion, shows, simulations and games as instructional techniques (pg. 89). I believe these methods provide a rich learning environment.
Multiple intelligences is one area where my self-contract lacked. I did recognize that there are many different learning styles; however I did not set a goal to somehow embrace the differences in intelligences in my classroom. After my reading facilitation last week, I am confident I can take what I learned about practical applications in the classroom using multiple intelligences and revise my self-contract to include them in my teachings.
Tell me and I forget. Show me and I remember. Involve me and I understand. ~ Chinese proverb
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