How do we maintain our passion for teaching in the face of so much change?

 

Passion for teaching has never been a problem for me. I enjoy teaching and connecting with children. I became a teacher because a friend told me I would never be bored. I have been teaching for over ten years now and boredom has never been a problem. The changes have been many from when I began teaching, but they have only made it easier for me to teach my students. Through the years technology has improved my ability to teach to children’s learning styles. I have gone from teaching a group of children, to differentiating, to now individualizing learning for each student. I would not have been able to travel on this journey without technology and an open mind for creativity. 

Dave Burgess has tapped into the wonderful world of creativity and I look forward to reading more about how he makes his room a safe and fun environment for learning. It is very important to me to have a classroom that is safe to have the wrong answer, make mistakes, and share ideas. I have been successful creating this environment most years. I know I am successful when a student reminds a peer that we don’t do that in here.  I love how Dave creates this environment by acting crazy with direction to let kids know they can let their hair down and relax and enjoy learning. It is okay to take risk and be yourself in his class.

Flip Flippen spoke to our Mat–Su district wide opening year professional development day. Flip is the creator of Capturing Kids Hearts. It is a way of structuring your school and classroom that make kids feel like they belong and are supported. He emphasized the importance of connecting with kids if you want them to be motivated to learn. He shared with everyone his personal and professional experiences of connecting with kids, making them feel cared about, and keeping them accountable will resulted in kids working hard to better themselves.  Providing and safe and rich environment is key to kid’s progress through school and life. We cannot control what goes on at home so much, but we can control their time in school.

I just read a blog last week from Mind/Shift titled Struggle Means Learning: Difference in Eastern and Western Cultures. In this article it shared how in eastern culture kids are taught at an early age that struggle means learning. When you are learning something new you struggle to learn it. Kids from eastern cultures will work on a problem much longer than kids in the western cultures. In western cultures, if a student is not successful at first they often get frustrated and stop working on the problem or skill. What I found most interesting about this article was that we in the western culture worry about our kids keeping up with the eastern culture in math and science. The article states that eastern culture parents say that their kids are like robots and lack creativity like the kids in the western cultures. My thoughts that I took away from this article is how do we continue to create creativity in our kids while building better work ethic when something gets hard? That is what I would like to master as a teacher.

 

References

BurgessFlippen, F. (2013) Capturing Kids’ Hearts.

The Flippen Group., D. (2012). Teach like a pirate. San Deigo, CA: Dave Burgess Consulting, Inc.

 Mind/Shift Blog., Struggle Means Learning: Difference in Eastern and Western Cultures, (2012)

http://.kqed.org/mindshit/2012/11/struggle-means-learning-difrerence-in-eastern-and-western-cultures/?

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