Urban Legends About Teaching

There are 2 urban legends that are written about in Chapter 1 that can be analyzed. The first being Teachers are born, not made and All you really need to know is the subject you are teaching. During the past 3 years at college I have learned all about the teaching profession and I have been able to observe my fellow classmates as they teach. I do believe that there are certain students where teaching comes naturally to them. They need a little bit of corrective feedback while teaching lessons to make them become better than they are at that point in time. There are students in my classes who need a little more work than others. But I do believe that many of them can transform themselves into better teachers with practice and the right suggestions. If they listen to these suggestions then they have potential to be just as good as their other classmates. I don't think that it is correct to say that only teachers are born and it is impossible to become a teacher if you are not born with certain skills. Everyone can work at it to become better because practice does make perfect. With a lot of practice, these individuals that are not "born" teachers can very well become just as good as someone else who has been teaching for numerous years. To go along with this is the second urban legend about all you really need to know is the subject you are teaching is that sometimes teachers that know too much about what they are teaching are not able to relay the information back to their students. They sometimes have trouble teaching their students because they know the information, but it is hard to explain it to others. I have encountered a few teachers in college that are very smart about their subject matter, but have a difficult time teaching the class because they are masters at what they are teaching. Sometimes it is easier to teach a subject that you don't know much about to your students. I believe you need to know just enough to be able to teach and also you must be skilled in the art and science of teaching also known as pedagogy.  To be a successful teacher you must know about your subject and be able to teach your students about it. My main goal as a teacher will be to make sure that my students are successful at the subject no matter how much extra time I must put in to help them achieve their goals.