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Question: James (1899) suggests that, “children admire a teacher who has skill”. He also suggests that a teacher “must express their interest “. How are students supposed to learn, when the teacher does not express that interest in their lectures?

Passage: James (1899) stated that, “Children admire a teacher who has skill. What he does seems easy, and they wish to emulate it. It is useless for a dull and devitalized teacher to exhort her pupils to wake up and take an interest. She must first take one herself; then her example is effective as no exhortation can possibly be” (p. 26).

When I first entered the program of school psychology I was startled by the realization that our roles in the school are primarily geared toward assessment. Once it was time to start mastering the assessment process, I had a difficult time learning and caring about the process. The manner in which the lesson was taught to us was not effective to me, because the teacher simply lectured on the background of the assessment tool and read straight from the assessment manual. Not once was there any relation to when he used it as a school psychologist, or his satisfaction or interest with the tool. I found myself questioning if I even wanted to continue in the field of school psychology, because all semester I could not take the interest in the different assessment tools that were being lectured to us. Just like James (1899) says, “it is useless for a dull and devitalized teacher to exhort her pupils to wake up and take an interest” (p. 26). Similar to this quote, I never found the interest in the assessment tool during that semester.

Consistent with what James (1899) states in the passage quoted above, I ended up expressing an interest in the assessment tool because of a different practitioner who did have an interest in the tool. I shadowed a school psychologist after the semester that I took the assessment class discussed earlier. When she would teach me about a particular assessment tool, she would discuss how she used the particular tool and would express her excitement to me about all of the beneficial outcomes it has, in relation to evaluating a child. After seeing her enthusiastically give the test to many students and being an observer to her particular skill, her passion towards assessment was contagious to me. I could not help but want to jump in and start using this test, just like she did. Everything she taught me I grasped onto and it fostered me to express interest and to explore this test even further outside of practicum experience.

I think this personal experience I had with the practitioner highlights the importance of having a practicum experience before becoming a professional in any career. When relating this experience to research, Le Riche (2006) explained that social work students typically shadow practitioners before they further develop their own professional ideas. Le Riche (2006) emphasized that job shadowing for students is “is a vehicle for perspective transformation, which is an important aspect of professional learning and the development of professional identity” (p. 782). Just as Le Riche (2006) spoke about professional identity, students in the classroom may form their personal identity by emulating the teacher. Teachers must be reminded to have their interest in the particular subject be energetic and visible, for their styles will be imitated and demonstrated in the lives of their students. In addition to this, students may already have previous interests and excitement that they have picked up earlier in their lives through imitation as well. That is why teachers should understand what prior interests that students have picked up, so that they can relate the new material to that prior experience when necessary.

References
James, W. (1899). Talks to teachers on psychology: And to Students on some of life’s
ideals. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, Inc.
Le Riche, P. (2006). Practicing observation in shadowing: Curriculum innovation
and learning outcomes in the BA social work. Social Work Education, 25,
771-784. doi: 10.1080/02615470600915829