The document discusses reasons for becoming a teacher, including intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. It examines motives for teaching such as making a positive impact on society. Teachers find intrinsic rewards in helping students learn and collaborating with other teachers. The document encourages reflection on experiences such as interactions with children to help decide if teaching is the right profession.

1. Chapter One
Why Teach?

2. Reflection
• The reflective practitioner thinks more
thoroughly and more systematically about his or
her experience.
• Questions to stimulate your thinking:
© 2009 Wadsworth, Cengage Learning 1|2

3. Motives for Teaching
• Examine your motives for teaching: make a well-
thought-out decision about what to do with your
life.
• Compare your motives to others’: other possible
answers to the question “Why teach?”
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4. Reasons for Originally Becoming a
Teacher
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5. Profession That Provides the Most
Benefit to Society
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6. Extrinsic Rewards of Teaching
• Salaries - improving
• Status - difficult to discern
• Power - unique power over students
• Work Schedule - “June, July and August”
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7. Intrinsic Rewards of Teaching
• Students – one of the strongest rewards perceived by
teachers
• Performing a Significant Social Service – important
work for the common good
• Fellow Teachers – stimulation and support
• The Work of Teaching – actual process highly
gratifying
© 2009 Wadsworth, Cengage Learning 1|7

8. VIDEO CASE: Teaching as a Profession:
Collaboration with Colleagues
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9. Deciding to Be a Teacher: Sources of
Useful Experience
• Real encounters with children or adolescents
• Vicarious experiences – film and television,
fiction, memoirs about teachers
• Guidance - advice from those who know you
• Reflection - the most important source
© 2009 Wadsworth, Cengage Learning 1|9