Teacher Meme

I left the classroom over a year ago now, but Dr. Pezz over at The Doc is In tagged me with the Teacher Meme:

1. I am a good teacher because…I connect with my students. I feel that it is important for me to know about my students so that I can help them learn based on their prior experiences and personal interests.

2. If I weren't a teacher, I would be…I don’t know. I grew up the son of a teacher and I fought that career path throughout my life. Somehow I ended up married to a teacher and possessing a degree is biological sciences - an area where a shortage of teachers existed in Oklahoma at the time. I took a chance as a teacher and found that I belonged in education.

3. My teaching style is…fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants. Sure, I planned lessons and outlined semesters but often my week long lesson plans were outdate about 15 minutes into the first class on Monday. If the students asked the right questions (and maybe some wrong ones too) then we could go for days on something I had not even intended to study. The semester long trebuchet project with my junior/senior physics class comes to mind.

4. My classroom is…loud. I taught science. I firmly believe that while some science can be taught sitting on the rear end - it was more effectively learned by actively participating in science - creating science if you will.

5. My lesson plans…were done weekly - and worthless often by the end of the first class on Monday. But they were done, just to make the building administrators s happy.

6. One of my teaching goals is…make sure that every student succeeded in learning. It might not be that same for each student, but every student had an opportunity to learn in my class and I wanted to make sure that every one of them my class knowing something about science or about themselves that they did not know when they entered my class.

7. The toughest part of teaching is…dealing with kids that made more money selling drugs than I made by teaching. These kids were not in school to learn, they were there to make money. Even some of those found something to learn in my class - but there was one I missed. His verbal and physical behavior got him removed from school before I could reach him. Such a loss of potential.

8. The thing I love most about teaching is…the interaction with the students - that moment when a student's eyes gleam with understanding as they explain a concept they once had struggled with to one of their peers.

9. A common misconception about teaching is…that it is easy. My seven years as a classroom teacher were more stressful than any other job I have ever held (including running a summer camp for hundreds of Boy Scouts).

10. The most important thing I've learned since I started teaching…be flexible. Students are usually pretty flexible if they understand the reasoning - in fact they are usually generate the need. No single student is ever exactly like any other student, therefore no class of students is ever exactly like any other class. Planning lessons for a semester at a time and never straying from the plan is a sure method for causing a disaster - even if you have been doing it for 25 years.


If you read this meme and have not yet been tagged - consider yourself tagged.