After reading Mr. Joe McClung's blog on What I learned this year (2008-2009) I feel I will be better prepared to teach my first year. In his first year of teaching he taught 6th grade Science. These are some things he learned, namely, he said "he learned a "TON" during his first year of teaching." I like this word because I think it is very fitting to the situation. Of course, I feel that I have learned a "TON" in this EDM 310 class. I know that I will be concerned as he was about the delivery of the content, but we need to be sure as he said "that we don't miss the most important part of teaching, and that is checking for student comprehension." Being flexible is good advice because I know that lesson plans will not always be perfect. More than trying to have that perfect lesson plan, when things go wrong try to better the situation with a "smile on your face."
I love the remark he made about technology that is very motivating for me because I get overwhelmed sometimes. He said "we cannot expect to master computer skills the first time we attempt them, so jump in head first ..... the water feels fine:)"
Another important detail is listening to your students because we may be the only person who does. Also, I agree that we should never stop learning he said "because we owe it to our students." Sometimes I don't want to take the time to learn new things because it is time consuming, but in the end I am not doing this for me, but for others, so they can experience learning too.
In his second year of teaching at What I learned this year (2009-2010) these are some points he addressed:
As a teacher we should not just lecture, but try to make the students to become independent thinkers.
Find that school Mom to help out. These are Mom's that have been there for several years and know how things work and will help at at a moments notice.
Check your ego at the door. We should do whatever it takes to get them to be excited about their education. We might have to play silly games to get them to respond. He said "we shouldn't be afraid to show we are passionate about teaching."
Don't be a control freak. Some people can go overboard with being in control. We should manage our classroom, but not to the point of doing everything for the students.
Scope and Sequence: Having a plan and staying on task to teach subjects for their grade level is very important. As teachers we will be more interested in one subject over another. We need to keep our perspective and spend adequate teaching and assessment time.
Don't lose sight of what is important: As teachers we cannot let adversity hinder our teaching in our classroom. The students are depending on you to teach and we have to be there to teach them no matter how bad it gets. His last bit of advice is to listen to those that have more experience than we do.
Hello Cyndi,
ReplyDeleteYou still seem to be using a lot of quotes instead of relying on your own interpretation of the posts. Some quotes when IMPORTANT are okay. However, in those instances the material quoted must be special or unique enough to warrant quoting it. This means that it must have some importance significance or relevancy. Something like this: "These are some things he learned, namely, he said "he learned a "TON" during his first year of teaching."" is not what I consider to be important enough to quote. That information can be easily paraphrased and isn't worth quoting. "TON" could be quoted, since it's specific and shows emphasis, but the rest of the sentence didn't need to be included.
Other than over-quoting, you did a pretty thorough job with summarizing and applying McClung's lessons.