Discovering Teaching as a Profession
Austin Passmore
Annotated Bibliographies
These annotations are the sources that helped me further my understanding of what makes a successful teacher and the challenges that new teachers face.
Citation
Curtis, C. (2012). Why do they choose to teach - and why do they
leave? A study of middle school and high school mathematics
teachers. Education, 132(4), 779-788. Retrieved from http://www.projectinnovation.biz/education_2006.html
Annotation
Curtis writes about the reasons that mathematics teachers are choosing to teach and why they are quitting. She writes that most teachers choose the profession because they love math, they enjoy working with children, they want to make a difference in the lives of students, and they were influenced by a great teacher or mentor. However, she points out that many teachers are resigning due to low pay, teacher blame, and low administrative help. Curtis also includes sample data that breaks up the reasons for teaching and for leaving by gender, age, ethnicity, and region. She shows that teaching is not exactly what new teachers think it is like. Curtis concludes that, “it would appear that the illusion of what teaching entails is drastically different than what teachers find when they step into the classroom. Perhaps teacher education programs are not realistically preparing potential teachers for the realities of the job” (Curtis, 2012).
Potential Quotes
A quote that I can use is a statistic that claims that a fourth of all teachers entering public school are quitting within the first three years of teaching. This is a quote that can back up my argument that one of the problems with teachers today is that new teachers are not learning how to become great teachers. Another quote states that most people become teachers because they were inspired by a good mentor or teacher. This can be used to examine the reasons why people choose teaching as a career choice and whether they are the right reasons or not.
Source Evaluation
This article is listed as a scholarly peer-reviewed article in the Galileo Database. It was published in 2012 by the company Project Innovation in a scholarly magazine titled Education. The author consistently is published in the magazine. At the bottom of the article, Curtis listed all of the references she used to write the article.
Reflection
I will use this article as my primary source throughout my paper. The article contains a survey that has reliable information that I can use. It also has many quantitative facts that I can use as supporting evidence in my paper. One of the article’s quotes is about the main theme of my paper, and I can use it to either introduce or support the theme at the beginning of the paper. It also has a list of references at the bottom that I can use for further research.
Citation
Desimone, Laura M.Bartlett, PilarGitomer, MadelineMohsin,
YasminPottinger, DanielleWallace,Jonathan D. "What They Wish They Had Learned."Phi Delta Kappan 94.7 (2013): 62- 65. MasterFILE Elite. Web. 23 Feb. 2014.
Annotation
This source was about the experience of three middle school math teachers in an urban environment during their first year. It discussed unexpected problems that the teachers had that they were not prepared for during their training. These teachers were not able to teach their students because they were not trained to teach a high-poverty population. Also, these teachers were not prepared to teach the content that they are assigned to teach. Some had not practiced their content area since before high school. This source shows a problem with the way teachers are being trained.
Potential Quotes
One quote that I can use is about how teachers view their own training. It states, “Many of the math teachers thought their training had done an inadequate job preparing them for diverse populations of students; that their student teaching experience was poorly aligned with their first job; or that they lacked sufficient math content knowledge in general or grade-level knowledge of math content in particular.” This quote shows that teachers believe that there is something wrong with the way they are being prepared for their career. Two other quotes are about how some teachers are not prepared to teach specific demographics, no matter how good their student teaching experience was. These quotes are about how student teaching in white suburban schools had made the teachers unprepared to teach the type of children in their classes and unprepared to create lessons “relevant to their lives.” These two quotes also show a problem with teacher training.
Source Evaluation
This article is a very credible source. It is from the magazine of an international organization, Phi Delta Kappan. This source was published very recently in 2013. The authors of this article are a team of professors who are experts in education. The data and research in this source was based off of a 5-year study that was done throughout the country. This article is also a scholarly article from an academic journal, and it is listed as so in the Galileo database.
Reflection
This source points out current problems with the training programs of teachers, while also emphasizing the importance of a good training program. This article made me think about problems with teaching, such as obtaining a position at a school whose population is unfamiliar to me, that I had never thought about before. The information in this article will be the primary source in a section of my research paper about the importance of teacher training. This article supports the argument of my research about how teachers are not being prepared for the true realities of their jobs.