Posts Tagged ‘Mentors’
“You’ll understand when you’re older.”
We tell that to our students, and they don’t like. We hear it when we start out in the teaching world and we don’t like. I remember an experienced band director told me once that he would tell me how to be a better teacher if he knew. He just knew that experience would help me get better. That frustrated me to no end.
I’m a step-by-step guy (if you haven’t noticed by reading other articles on this blog). “Just figure it out” is annoying to me. The way I like to figure things out is to look up the answers and work from there. “Experience is the best teacher” didn’t quite do that for …
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A comment was left recently that said,
Joel, I really enjoy your blog. You have written some amazing articles that I have printed and put in my first year file. I am currently student teaching right now. I appreciate your honesty about how scary and hard it can be sometimes, but also the greatness in the experience. I am having the time of my life, and I hope the enthusiasm I have stays with me. Your blog is helping, so thank you! If you could give one single piece of advice to a beginning teacher, what would it be? Just curious!
That challenged me to see if I could come up with something I hadn’t written before that was better …
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The common classroom management wisdom we all hear is, “Don’t smile before Christmas.” I believe that advice is good advice when taken metaphorically. If taken directly as written, it is about the worst advice you can follow.
Good advice
In the middle of my fourth semester of teaching, when I was learning how to really get a handle on classroom management, I asked lots of questions. Among the answers I got was this little gem:
Never smile before Christmas!
I asked further questions for clarification, and my mentors advised me that basically my job as a teacher is to educate the children. It is not to be their friend. The funny thing is that when you are strict, …
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November is Reader Appreciation Month at So You Want To Teach? Today’s featured reader is Pamela.
Name: Pamela
Location: Michigan
Occupation: Elementary Teacher, Reading Specialist
Blog: Blog may be coming soon, but none yet ;-)
Tell me some of your favorite things about your job
Some of my favorite things about teaching: I enjoy sharing my love of learning and my passion for certain topics. It goes beyond just teaching the material…it’s about making a personal connection with the students. Along those same lines, I love sharing the excitement of a good book. When I introduce it and starting talking about it with excitement, the students can’t wait for me to start reading. When it’s time to stop reading and …
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