Missed Class February 7th

TOTD:
"I would like to see how different teaching/learning methods work, but it scares me a little because this is not an experiment we can re-do…with kids we don’t have a do-over…Don’t get me wrong, I would like the…system to change for the better, but how can we make sure we are making the right choices?—I don’t know that we can.  We can act in accordance with our principles and integrity, and that will mean teaching in a way that you love to teach"

I agree that it is a little scary to think that we only have one year to make sure all of our students gain one year of knowledge. But, I think we will have plenty of time and energy to make sure our students reach this goal. I know it will be rough to not stress over the standards that we need to have taught, but getting too caught up in the stress may cause problems with our teachings. If we can just keep it cool and move at a decent pace, everything will be accomplished. One way to make sure we stay paced is to communicate with teachers in a PLC (Professional Learning Community). We must collaborate with other professionals in our field, especially the experienced ones because they are experienced and they have overcome many challenges that we will face as new teachers. Also, I feel that if we are constantly engaging ourselves in multiple research strategies and new educational articles, we can gain knowledge that we may not have gotten in class or the PLCs. A doctor is constantly engaging him or herself in bettering their knowledge on their craft. We as teachers need to constantly be bettering ourselves in our knowledge of our craft to help better our students. We have a challenging path, but that's what makes it so awesome! I don't think that we will ever truly know how well each student responds to our type of teaching. I do know that if we are constantly engaged in assessing our students, not only summative but formative, we will know where each student is on his or her learning continuum. When we constantly use assessing skills, we will know if we are making the right choices. I am confident that through constant assessment, we will be able to visualize where our students thinking is and be able to help supply the tools necessary to help push them forward on their learning continuum.