Can dispositions be taught?

I see dispositions as part of who a person is.  To be the person that you are, you have certain dispositions that make you a very good teacher or a not so good teacher.  I think that some soul searching and character evaluation should be done by yourself before thinking about becoming a teacher.  Teaching is very stressful and hard work for little pay.  I think that people have to have a certain disposition just to accept that kind of job.  Not everyone on the streets would be willing to do the job of teachers for as little as teachers get paid.  I believe that a person disposition makes them a good teacher because they are willing to accept that job for the pay.  Dispositions are an essential part of who a person is and if they can teach.  When someone has the characteristics of a good teacher, people can just see it.  That sense of understanding and commitment is seen by others when they look at a good teacher.  Good teachers do their job with great enthusiasm and passion.  This is not something you can teach someone.  You can teach a course of how to be enthusiastic or how to be passionate.  You either are, or you are not.  Teachers are a special kind of person that is raised with certain dispositions that makes them great teachers when they become older.  I don't think dispositions can be taught because it takes a lifetime to create the dispositions you have.

Inventiveness

Schools of today are losing their ability to encourage kids to create and invent.  Kids who are really into science because of creativity and imagination lose that interest in the sciences when they get to college because there is no more creativity.  Reading a textbook and listening to a professor lecture for an hour with 100 other students is not creative.  These students who lose that interest could have been the students who invent something to change our world.  But that doesn't happen when the students are bored to tears in a lecture.  I see creativity as a essential skill for students of the 21st century.  The jobs of today ask for employees to be creative.  The jobs that make the money are the jobs that design and invent the product.  There has to be a product design first before everyone can manufacture it and sell it.  These inventive people are hard to find today because of the lack of interest in science.  I think that science teachers and professors should do teaching hands on.  This is how creative people learn, from using their hands to make something!  These changes in teaching science would help the future of science and better our field of creative inventions.

Collaborativeness

  When first becoming a teacher, you may think that you are all alone.  This is not the case.  Most schools have teams or groups that meet together every week or so to discuss things in the classroom.  These groups or teams are important to teaching because the best way to learn is from experience.  By talking to other teachers you learn what they have experienced and will be better prepared for something similar to happen in your own classroom.  If every teacher had to experience a event in their classroom before they were able to learn from it they all would be horrified and unprepared their first couple years of teaching.  Fortunately that is not the case and coworkers are willing to share their experiences in group or team meetings.
  Now that we know the importance of teams and groups how do we run a well planned team meeting?  I would say that one of the first things is to have a plan.  Those few minutes in between recess and lunch are critical minutes that need to be planned so that the time is used effectively and efficiently.  Without a plan, it can be very easy to get off topic and waste time.  Even when teachers have the best intentions of working hard and getting things done, distractions will happen.  With a plan topics that are important to talk about will have enough time to be discussed, plus things won't be forgotten that way.   With a plan teachers can conduct a meeting with their team that is time effective and not forget the topics to be discussed.
  During the planned meetings with your team teachers need to be positive and supportive of your other teachers.  Support the ideas your fellow team teachers have, but suggest new ideas if you have some.  Be a contributing member of your team by sharing your own experiences or advice on the topic being discussed.  The way that people learn from collaboration is when people collaborate together.  Without feedback from your peers you won't gain knowledge. With feedback from your peers you will  know how to teach or address a situation in the classroom differently or more effectively.   This benefits you as a teacher because you can be more at ease knowing that other teachers are backing you up and gave you good advice.  Collaboration also benefits the students because when teachers share their style with each other, the best of the best teaching styles can be used to educate the students in the best way possible.
  As long as everyone in the team spends the time and effort to plan ahead, give positive support, and be a good contributor in the team than everyone will benefit from discussing experiences that fellow teachers are having in their day to day lives in the classroom. 

Reflectiveness

Reflection is a hard thing because people don't like to self critique.  Looking back at something you did and seeing where you made faults is a difficult thing to do. After you take a test, you don't want to go back through the test and see which ones you got wrong because you wish that you would have gotten them right.  The same goes for teachers, we wish that things would have gone the right way but they don't always go as planned.  Teachers have to understand that things don't always go as planned and we need to be flexible and learn from our mistakes. 
The reason that it's important to reflect is that reflection is the best way to learn from your mistakes.  If you see that something didn't go well, reflecting on the situation and how things played out is a great way to learn what went wrong and where.  If a student was misbehaving in class and you ended up sending the student to the principal to be dealt with, looking back on that situation would be valuable because you could find ways to deal with that situation in your own class next time.  The principal will appreciate your efforts to keep students out of the office and control your own class.  This will bring integrity to the classroom because other students will see a teacher that can have control and keep his or her students in line.
I reflect most effectively by having a minute to just sit and think after the time I spend in the 5th grade classrooms or tutoring my student, Cameron.  I just sit and think about the time I spent  teaching and tutoring, how things went good and if things went wrong how they happened.  I think about how I handled the situation this time, and try to think how I could have done things differently.

Passion

I had a very good experience with a science teacher who had great passion for science in 5th and 6th grade. Mr. Aunan taught the science unit in a 3 teacher rotation from science, to language, to history/social studies. Mr. Aunan would talk about different things that were happening in the science world today. He had a science calendar that had different science questions each day. He would ask the question to the class, no matter how difficult or unrelated the science question would be. This was usually done at the end of class to prevent us from getting off task at the beginning of class. We all really enjoyed his explanation of what the answer was the the science question. Most of all, we all felt more like adults when we would work together to try and solve these questions. He would set up the answering of the questions in a class discussion format. This way everyone could give input if they wanted to. He would also explain how your input was good and tell you how to think further in the right direction instead of telling you that your idea was wrong.
These brainstorming and critical thinking sessions at the end of class made us more excited about learning about science. We all talked about wanting to build a real bridge, or being a chemist and mixing up chemicals, or a physicist and learning about how the things in the world work together. Mr. Aunan was a very passionate teacher in the field of science. Because he showed us his passion for science, we all became very interested in science and learned more about science than most of our other class topics. I hope that one day I too can show my students that same passion for science and be that "cool teacher who knows a lot of stuff".

Authenticity

Authenticity is a tough and broad topic to cover in being a teacher.  Being authentic with your students can be very trick and has a fine line that a teacher doesn't want to cross.  I feel that there are certain times that you should be authentic with your students and tell them the entire truth on a matter, then there are certain times that things should be left out and discussed later when the child is older.
A student should have the feeling that their teacher will explain a topic if there is good reason to explain it.  Otherwise the topic is not appropriate and should not be discussed.  However, if the student feels that their teacher is unnecessarily hiding things from him or her than the teacher needs to be a little more Authentic with their students.  Also teachers can't' make up what they feel or believe, so falsifying a opinion or idea would an example of not being authentic with your students.
Teachers should be willing to share their own personal opinions when the time and place calls for it.  Otherwise, personal opinions can be left out of the classroom and education can continue.

Compassion

When I was in third grade, my teacher Mrs. Trolliett was a very compassionate teacher.  She made a huge difference in my life with specific regards to reading.  When I was in third grade, my reading level rivaled that of a kindergartner.  Mrs. Trolliett was determined to get me up to a third grade reading level by the end of that year.  I didn't like reading because all the books I had read before were "boring" to me.  I needed books that I liked and wanted to read.  Mrs. Trolliett introduced me to Captain Underpants by Dav Pilkey.  these books were a lot of fun and had a fair amount of vocabulary words that Pilkey makes fun of in the book.  These books sparked interest in reading for me.  I ended up reading more because I enjoyed some of the stories that were written for boys my age.  I caught up to my reading level by the end of that year and read just fine today.  Mrs. Trolliett was a huge impact on my educational development because she cared about me.  She never became angry with me for not being able to read very well or very fast.  She instead helped me and remained kind and confident while I read Captain Underpants and learned to love reading.  Because of Mrs. Trolliett's compassion for her students, including myself.  I owe Mrs. Trolliett a lot because without the basic skill of being able to read, I would not be able to excel in any other area of school.