Two Years a Teacher: Mission
by Olivier Cleynen
Over the course of my second year teaching in high school, I was able to make much clearer sense of what I was doing. Eventually I formulated it into something that I could explain to my students:
In Physics class, you prepare
for a world with a changed climate.
And so, a couple of months after the start of the school year, I would present my mission to my students of classes 9 and up: why I thought I was here, and what exactly Physics class had do to with living in a world with a changed climate.
I made the presentation as visual as possible, taking care to use photos of people in which students could recognize themselves (for this the free-to-reuse material I could find on the web did not suffice, and I purchased a commercial license for a few photos). Here it is:
I found that going through the exercise of writing the mission greatly clarified my ideas about teaching. I presented it to students with pride, and I think it had an effect on many. If you are a teacher, I highly recommend trying it!