Blog Post # 9

For this assignment we read Mr. Mc Clung's post "What I've Learned This Year."  This was his own personal reflection on what he learned throughout his first year of teaching.  I really enjoyed reading this post.  I feel like as teachers (and future teachers) we often forget these very fundamental ideas.  I really liked what he said about being flexible.  Mr. McClung said that in his own intership he would strive to write the perfect lesson-but that perfect lesson is unreachable because inevitably something will go wrong, or a student will ask you a great question which will lead you off topic.  As long as the students are learning though this lesson is as perfect as it gets.  I think what he said about being reasonable is also very important.  I think that as teachers we often want more than what our students are able to give them.  I even see this in college.  We must remember that these students are still kids-they need to be able to spend some of their free time on things other than school work.  And our class is not the only class that they have.  I think that this is where the communication issue comes in.  We need to, not only communicate clearly with our students what is expected of them, but we should also communicate with other teachers.  Teachers almost never colaborate on projects.  It is so easy to combine multiple subjects into one project but teachers don't work together to create these projects.  We must communicate with those we work with in order to make not only the best work environment for ourselves, but also the best learning environment for our students.