Entering the Educator Blogosphere and Twitterverse can be intimidating even for a mid-career educator like myself. Everyone I have encountered has been lovely, and I am inspired and invigorated to participate in this space. But let’s be honest, there are a lot of experts with zillions of followers who are authors, TED talkers, and educational rock stars – people who share their idealism with a certain authority that can be daunting. We are all bound together by our love for learning and students, our hopes for engagement, our excitement about shifting tides, our promotion of good ideas, our desire to connect. But, when I sometimes feel overwhelmed, I can’t help but think just how formidable this could be to someone preparing to walk into his or her own classroom for the first time at the start of the fall. In a space where ideas are advertised, do we all look "too good to be true"?
I've decided to be honest and admit to five mistakes I made when I started teaching. Another time I’ll tell you about my most embarrassing teaching moment. That’s a gem. In the future I will even share with you five things I did right at the beginning of my career (luckily a few of those things mattered so much that what I share below didn’t ruin any lives). However, through the years, I got better. Some of it was due to amazing mentors; some of it was due to professional development; but a lot of it was because I learned from my failures. It’s likely that these mistakes will not be your mistakes, but whatever your mistakes may be, if you reflect and want to get better, you can. Nobody is perfect.
These were my five "worst practices" in the beginning of my career. Do not try these:
5. I used grades to motivate students. I think I did a lot of things wrong in the way of grades at the beginning of my career. I used zeros, I gave extra credit. If students weren’t behaving I would begin to quiz them more frequently so they would be more motivated.
4. I didn’t always follow through. I didn’t always deliver what I wanted to do. The Senior Corner at the back of the classroom, where I intended to hang pictures up of important events from their life that year. My plans for using community mentors, or my idea of mailing letters to my students five years after graduation. I had ideas that were harder to carry out than I anticipated, and it made me feel lousy, especially if I had shared those ideas with my students.
3. I did things I didn’t believe in because people told me to. In my first job, I was told as a general rule of classroom management that I could always get nicer, but I couldn’t get firmer, so I had a lot of rules in my classroom - despite “a lot of rules” going completely against my personality. Also, I sometimes taught minutia because it was “on the test” and I worried about making sure I covered everything in the curriculum, even if it meant I didn’t explore things my kids wanted to, or I rushed through things.
2. I confused "more" with "rigor." I dominated my students’ evenings with my reading assignments because (see number 3 above) a colleague I really admired was very concerned about preparing the students for the AMOUNT of reading they would have to do in college.
1. I didn’t give students enough choice. I primarily taught whole class novels, which can be good practice sometimes, but isn’t good practice all of the time. I let students choose topics for their research papers, but I wasn’t open enough to letting students explore obscure or harder-to-prove topics because I didn’t anticipate where it would go. I monopolized too much of their time with tasks I had given them to complete.
I've decided to be honest and admit to five mistakes I made when I started teaching. Another time I’ll tell you about my most embarrassing teaching moment. That’s a gem. In the future I will even share with you five things I did right at the beginning of my career (luckily a few of those things mattered so much that what I share below didn’t ruin any lives). However, through the years, I got better. Some of it was due to amazing mentors; some of it was due to professional development; but a lot of it was because I learned from my failures. It’s likely that these mistakes will not be your mistakes, but whatever your mistakes may be, if you reflect and want to get better, you can. Nobody is perfect.
These were my five "worst practices" in the beginning of my career. Do not try these:
5. I used grades to motivate students. I think I did a lot of things wrong in the way of grades at the beginning of my career. I used zeros, I gave extra credit. If students weren’t behaving I would begin to quiz them more frequently so they would be more motivated.
4. I didn’t always follow through. I didn’t always deliver what I wanted to do. The Senior Corner at the back of the classroom, where I intended to hang pictures up of important events from their life that year. My plans for using community mentors, or my idea of mailing letters to my students five years after graduation. I had ideas that were harder to carry out than I anticipated, and it made me feel lousy, especially if I had shared those ideas with my students.
3. I did things I didn’t believe in because people told me to. In my first job, I was told as a general rule of classroom management that I could always get nicer, but I couldn’t get firmer, so I had a lot of rules in my classroom - despite “a lot of rules” going completely against my personality. Also, I sometimes taught minutia because it was “on the test” and I worried about making sure I covered everything in the curriculum, even if it meant I didn’t explore things my kids wanted to, or I rushed through things.
2. I confused "more" with "rigor." I dominated my students’ evenings with my reading assignments because (see number 3 above) a colleague I really admired was very concerned about preparing the students for the AMOUNT of reading they would have to do in college.
1. I didn’t give students enough choice. I primarily taught whole class novels, which can be good practice sometimes, but isn’t good practice all of the time. I let students choose topics for their research papers, but I wasn’t open enough to letting students explore obscure or harder-to-prove topics because I didn’t anticipate where it would go. I monopolized too much of their time with tasks I had given them to complete.