That pretty much set the tone for the day. Only instead of real burps in my face, I kept getting verbal ones.
I know it's probably because we are nearing the end of the school year and everyone is frustrated, tired, and overwhelmed with all of the end-of-the-year stuff we do, but all day it seemed that attitudes, beliefs, and ideas about teaching that disappoint me were getting burped out into the atmosphere, and some evil teaching jet stream brought them all into my room. It got me thinking about why people get into teaching in the first place--and what teaching should be all about.
From my experiences, I think teaching is about:
- getting students to do the learning. If we're the ones talking all the time, when is the learning happening?
- giving students power over their own learning by teaching them how to learn, how to deal with uncertainty and how to learn from failure. You can only do that once you let students take the reins of their own learning.
- focusing on content as a vehicle for learning, not the learning. This means building your core curriculum around the "need-to-knows" that are useful to teach students how to learn. More content isn't better if they don't know how to remember it, recall it, or apply it to a new situation.
- remembering that planning isn't about making things easy for us as teachers all the time; we're here to help students learn, and sometimes that means a lot of work.
- not settling for "good enough." Ever. From ourselves or from our students.
- knowing we have one of the hardest and one of the most rewarding jobs at the same time.
And to remind me to not let the dogs on the bed tomorrow morning.