Saturday, March 26, 2011

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. 

2 comments:

  1. Jacob,

    I feel that being flexible and being able to have a "plan B" is very important too. There are so many variables that can affect the day to day lessons that are planned and being able to think on your toes will be helpful in educating and presenting lessons to students. You are right about teachers not collaborating with their fellow colleagues. I know when my oldest child went to, Causey Middle School, they had so much homework and on top of that they had project after project all due within in a few days of each other. I remember being so aggravated because my child would stay up until after midnight trying to get it all done. She couldn't even do any extra curricular activities because there was no more time available after doing homework all afternoon. I think it would be a great idea if teachers could get together and come up with some plan so that big projects and numerous homework assignments weren't' due at the same time.

    Good work!

    Kelly Evans

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  2. I am not sure that we have forgotten these ideas because at this stage we haven't even started. I would also be wiling to argue that for most educators, these ideas are not fundamental-- they have to be practiced. I say this because I think that our career choice lends itself to controlling personalities, or natural leadership types. I don't think this is a bad quality at all-- in fact, I think our students will be comforted in our structured guidance, BUT I do think that we will have to make an effort to listen, adjust, and rethink.

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