Kimberlee Lankford
EDUC 2130
October 11, 2015
Strengths and Weaknesses
Becoming a teacher is very exciting to me. I’ve always had a passion for children my whole life ever since I was a child myself. I feel like I would be great in a classroom with kids because I’ve been around children my entire life. I have three younger brothers, younger cousins, I babysit, and I’ve helped out with children’s church at my church for a little over six years. But with me wanting to become a teacher, I’ve got to know my strengths and also my weaknesses about myself.
One of my greatest strengths as a teacher would have to be my organizational skills. I’m really organized when it comes to school because I want to keep everything straight and everything in line so I know where everything is. I think it’s important to be organized in the classroom so you don’t get all your lessons mixed up and lose all the materials that are needed for that day. Teachers should never have to sit at their desks looking for a lesson plan that they made last week under stack and stacks of papers. Organizational is very important.
Another strength of mine would have to be responsibility. Coming from a family of five kids, and being the second oldest, I’ve had to learn to have responsibilities early on in life. I believe that when someone is responsible, organization comes with it (which I mentioned above), and lots of other things, like dependability, initiative, teamwork, and strong work ethic.
I’m also very strong in the creativity area. This may not be helpful for middle or high school students, but elementary I think it is. Young children tend to learn better and have the motivation to learn when learning is made into something fun for them. Some people may not see this as a strength for a teacher, but rather just a talent. For me, I feel it’s important to have some kind of creativity activity in the classroom.
A weakness of mine would have to be the amount of patience I have. I’m not going to say I don’t have any, because I do, but not with some people. This is a weakness that most people lack, but need to work on, including myself. I have to say, I have learned to have more patience as I’ve gotten older, but I’ve got a little ways to go.
To fix my weakness, I’m trying to learn to look at the big picture of my life and where I want it to go at the times that I start to get frustrated and impatient. I try to remember that a teacher isn’t going to have an easy life with being frustrated and impatient all the time. Working with young children is going to have to take patience every day, and that’s what I have to remember.
Procrastination is another weakness I have. As I’ve gotten in college I have stayed on top of things like I need too, but I still find myself starting papers and studying a day before it’s due. It’s funny that I’m such a procrastinator, and yet, a perfectionist at the same time. I tend to go over my written papers a thousand times before I think that they’re good enough to turn in. I am starting to learn that since I’m such a perfectionist, I need to start all my work earlier, that way I’m not up all the hours of the night trying to make all of my work ‘perfect’.
I’ve never really thought about my strengths and weaknesses before. It’s good to know what strengths you have and weaknesses you have, also. Knowing your weaknesses is very important because then you know what you need to work on, and how to turn those weaknesses into something positive later on.