TPI Results

Did the results of your TPI fit your image of yourself as a teacher? Do you think the TPI results are different for the same person teaching online and face-to-face?

I found my TPI results interesting. I scored between 31 and 39 in all areas with Apprenticeship (39) and Developmental (37) being the highest and Social Reform (31) and Transmission (33) the lowest. Even though this meant I had one dominant (Apprenticeship) an one recessive (Social Reform) but nothing veered to the extreme high or low in one direction or another.

I am not sure what I think of the results and if it fit my image of myself as a teacher. Years of one-on-one music lesson teaching has always been a side job for me, no matter what else I was teaching (including every elementary grade from Preschool through fifth grade, instrumental music grades 4-12, high school ESL, high school and adult music theory, high school music appreciation, sixth grade Information Literacy, or Library K-6 at some point or another) and that requires teaching of practical skills and preparing students for public performance using those skills so I see a correlation to the dominance in apprenticeship. In my early teaching training I was mentored in a developmental approach and it has deeply impacted my thinking so that score showing up a bit higher also seems to make sense.

My only real internal discrepancies (disagreement between belief, intention, and action) occurred in social reform and transmission. I think I felt the most cautious and conflicted when I answered those questions in the inventory. Regarding social reform, I do feel a caution in using the classroom as a platform for lobbying for some political or social ideology because there is so much room for well-intentioned and misguided energy. There is a degree of subjectivity, and slant even in news reporting. I do agree we need to teach students to think, but to also do their homework and research the facts from all angles. I personally am cautious about jumping on any political or social reform bandwagon. Part of that is because I am old enough to have seen some social movements turn out to be based on incorrect or incomplete information. That no doubt influences my teaching. About transmission also, I felt a little conflicted answering those questions as well, because though I have had many times in my life where I have taught subjects I had a high degree of expertise in, I have also found myself in positions of teaching subjects I was not expert in simply because it was a need (ie. the year I started 8 beginner violinists when I had not spent any time learning the violin myself and had to stay a few lessons ahead of my students all along the way, or becoming an ESL tutor because I had had the experience of living in a foreign culture and trying to learn another language and could identify even though I had no coursework in ESL).

I really would be inclined to think the TPI results for a teacher online and in a traditional classroom would be the same. I think your core image of what is important to good teaching will be transmitted in all your teaching regardless of the environment.

Blog Post for Week 3

How has your thinking about online schools and online schooling changed since the first week?

I am pleasantly surprised to find that the concept of virtual schooling, specifically how to manage virtual schools and what they should be expected to accomplish is getting a fair amount of intelligent consideration. Some of the concerns I had that first week -- that I know to be concerns of others -- are things that are being accounted for in at least some sectors of the virtual school community. One of these is the question of academic integrity. It gives me more confidence to know that there are virtual schools that require some phone contact, and face-to-face contact, through webcam, and/or through random or regular proctored testing. I am glad to read too, that learning styles and effective strategies are being incorporated and there are more options on the K-12 level than just courses where students are reading pages and pages of text and left on their own to understand what they are required to learn with little to no help from an on-line instructor. I appreciate that there are those who are thinking through the process of authorizing virtual schools, and not blindly making decisions apart from the realities of how students learn and what is needed by LEAs and SEAs to be more effective in reaching students who are in need of credit recovery or a school day that doesn't require them to sit in a brick and mortar classroom from 8-3 pm five days a week. I was pleasantly surprised that the needs of students with disabilities are being discussed, and how to make online schooling a viable option for those Special Education students that might want it. I am also pleasantly surprised to consider that the online schooling option allows that a teacher may be able to give more one-to-one attention than in a traditional classroom. From before week 1 I was sold on virtual schooling as having tremendous potential, and the more I learn, the more convinced, yea, enthusiastic I become about it.