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Teaching can be a great job and a very difficult job…even in the same day! There is so much to the job you need to boil it down and make sure you are clear with what your goals are. We would like to produce self-regulated learners who are motivated to continue learning new things and applying their knowledge as hey proceed through life. The poor moments in a class, are when you can see the class is not getting anything from what you are doing. You tend to have put in lots of work, trying to get into the student mindset to think where they are and what will speak to them, and then deliver your lesson. When it does not come off it can be difficult to assess were the issues arise but there is a good chance it starts with you, not the kids! When its works, you flip all that! A lesson can snowball in a sense and move from teachable moment to teachable moment. In a really good class you can even be a spectator to the action, as students interact, analyze, question and derive meaning f
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Recent posts

Culturally Relevant Pedagogy

My school is a private school but likely has a greater diversity that some of its competitors. This means that I do have classes with kids from a range of backgrounds and socio-economic statuses. This can give rise to challenges but if a teacher is sensitive to these issues they can be balanced out so everyone gets an equal chance. Ladson-Billings (1994) has a list of areas which make up culturally sensitive teaching. She thinks that parents need to be involved, students need to be treated as individuals with their own strengths and weaknesses, instruction should be multifaceted in order to reach all students and the teachers should be facilitators who create an environment relevant to each student’s cultural and educational needs. Sound like a lot? It is! But it can be broken down somewhat. Even in a streamed classroom you can meet kids with a wide range of abilities and learning styles. Teachers have to be aware of this and make sure the class speaks to all the students. This
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Growth Mindset

I reflected more on the growth mindset around the time that we were covering it early in the course, but it has had an effect on the way I approach teaching and conversing with students. For those of you unfamiliar, growth mindset, as opposed to fixed mindset is having the inclination that you are capable of learning and applying new knowledge. Through work, strategies and help, not luck and innate ability, you can improve your lot! Believing this and acting as such can help with motivation and empowerment (Dweck, 2006). This concept especially rings true in education. In the last couple of decades, with the advent of technologies such as Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) has lead to an explosion in understanding of how the brain works and it appears now that human brain are growing, developing and refining themselves until at least a person reaches their 30’s. This point in particular is why it is important to stop students from saying “ah well I always was poor at Math!” or some equi
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Diversity

My school, for a private school, has students with a wide range of Socio-Economic standards who come from many areas in the city and surrounding counties. We have students whose families are in a position to give enormous donations to fund raising campaigns and some with many close family members who are in jail, and are able to pay fees due to school grants and non-profits around the city. It makes for an interesting mix that is a real selling point to many. Of course it comes with its own challenges! There is a fledgling operation where we have about a half dozen Chinese students who attend our school and stay with host families during the year. These students have wide levels of English and ability too.   It all makes for an interesting mix.   3 of my five classes are middle stream Freshmen students where I get a good range from motivated to lazy, well off to struggling financially, but bar one students there is no real issue with English. My one student is a recent immigrant
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Rock Star Theorists

ED 710 Blog 1 – Rock Star Theorists For me the “Rock Star Theorists” are Dewey and Bruner. Both of these guys would have elements of constructivism in their views and that applies to me too. Constructivism means that students are actively engaged in the synthesis of meaning and knowledge (Flinders and Thornton, 2013). One of my favorite quotes, which I have seen attributed to Oscar Wilde is “Education is a wonderful thing, but it is worth remembering from time to, time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught!” I think this fits in well with Bruner, who believed in learning through play, and in the teacher creating opportunities for the students to learn on their own. Students should also work to figure out a use for what the knowledge they have, or apply their knowledge to novel situations (Flinders and Thornton, 2013).   I also appreciate Bruner’s work in looking at cognitive development. It is all well and good knowing everything yourself but if you do not appreciate
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Ambitions...

I certainly have goals for my teaching moving forward. I came from a time when there was more chalk and talk and I am aware that my default teaching mode is similar to that. My main goal is to have more discovery based and project based learning in my class. This year I am trying to introduce more of this in the class. At the same time I am trying to release a bit more power to the class. This will be a fine balancing act. There are standards for the content kids should know, and thus giving too much power to the class may mean that we go off in tangents from the material unless I am careful, but I think encouraging curiosity has to be an important part of my work as a teacher. If they have no interest in learning they will not succeed going forward. I have seen some recent success with this. In some literacy exercises, when we close read articles, my worksheets have ended asking students what questions they now have, and for them to read an associated article of their choice and m
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Parental Discussions

I try not to let pride get in the way of me doing my job, and I always run emails in delicate situations by others just so I don’t cause waves or make my own someone else life more difficult. There are counsellors, my department chair and members of the administration who have read and ok’ed or altered emails in the past. But there was one incident last year when I did not fully objectify the situation before sending the email. I got a tepid “if that’s what you want to say…” response from one of my usual checkers and feeling like I got some things of my chest I sent the email. Now the student is a nice guy but his executive functioning is not what you would wish it to be and this leads to difficulties in keeping up, getting his work done and staying focused. Even staying awake. I was unusually sympathetic to this because I feel he was being pushed unreasonably hard at home. There was even whisperings of trying AP subjects in his Junior year. I feel these would have amounted to
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