The four stages of teaching is something that teachers need to know. It’s important to know the stage of teaching you are in so that you can advance your career and become the best possible teacher for your students.
1. The first stage of teaching that you need to know about is the fantasy stage.
In this stage, as a teacher, you have grandiose ideas of what you’re going to do and that you will be the best teacher ever for your students.
However, you have not gained the skills and knowledge as a teacher to live out the fantasy in your head.
In this stage, your goal is to face reality that you may not know what you are doing.
2. The second stage of teaching you need to know about is survival.
In this stage, you’ve started teaching and you can barely stay afloat.
You’re struggling to manage your classroom and keep up with the work load of being a teacher.
You may leave work feeling exhausted, drained and feel like giving up. The goal in this stage is to choose one thing to develop throughout the school year. For example, you may choose to just work on your classroom management.
In this stage, you can also work on having a resilient mindset to help you through survival mode. Check out this post on teacher mindset.
The third stage is mastery; you need to know about this stage so you can work towards it.
You’ve learned how to effectively manage your classroom, teach students to mastery and you’re able to see learning growth in your students.
You’re able to create and implement lessons that affect the real world of students.
The amount of time for mastery is in direct proportion to your ability to learn and grow in your teacher craft. In other words, if you’re willing to learn and grow your level of mastery will increase over time.
To help you in this stage of mastery, you can read about the teaching strategies you need to be effective.
You can also read this post on how to master your craft.
4. The fourth stage that you need to be aware of is impact.
In this stage your influence as a teacher goes beyond your classroom walls.
Your work has an impact on your school community or your neighborhood community.
For example, I was a EdReports Klawe Fellow and I completed my Impact Project, which allowed me to advocate for high quality instructional materials.
In this stage, you need to think about what projects you would like to work on that will benefit students outside of your school community.
The four stages are fantasy, survival, mastery and impact. Which stage are you?
Source: First Days of School, Harry Wong.