Personality and Teaching & Learning Styles

I will be honest... the personality types that I got from the test links in the course had me as an ESFP or ESFJ. However, I had taken a Briggs-Meyer personality test before and I had been categorized as an ENFJ. Truthfully, the only section that I consistently tested the same in all tests was as an extrovert. Everything else was very close to each other and could really go either way. So I decided to read out the personality descriptions of the three personalities I just mentioned to two close friends and asked them to choose the one they thought best described me. They both agreed that the ENFJ sound more like, which I agree with. Therefore, I have determined to have an ENFJ personality. 

As an ENFJ, I am someone that wants to help people succeed and my goal is to help improve myself, the people around me, and my community. This is one of the reason why I want to be a teacher in the first place. As a teacher I will have the ability to encourage, motivate, and assist students on a daily basis to become good citizens and to give it their best to succeed. I want students to pursue their dreams and to better themselves in order for our communities and the world to improve as a whole.

My teaching style survey revealed that I have a high tendency to teach as a formal authority and a delegator. I have a moderate tendency to teach as an expert, personal model, and facilitator. This does not come as a surprise to me because as a substitute teacher I have noticed that I sometimes have a difficult time moving forward with the class if I do not feel like all the students are paying attention to me. It is an area, I believe, that is not necessarily helpful and I need to find the balance between maintaining my authority in the classroom and becoming a drill sergeant. Becoming a drill sergeant, in my short experience, is not very effective in the classroom in terms of learning.

My learning style survey yielded the following results:

• moderate preference for reflective learning
• moderate preference for sensing
• very strong preference for visual learning
• fairly balanced between sequential and global learning

As an aspiring history teacher, I believe the visual learning is very important and will help students better learn all the facts involved in a history class. Students should get as close as possible to experiencing the historical events they are being taught. This can be through videos, field trips, or student projects that emerges them into what they are studying. Additionally, it is very important to me that students apply their historical knowledge to the real world when being active citizens because history has very real implications to the current and future status of the world.