I am watching a video right now that I am so glad I found (because it says all the things I already believe) that I just paused it to post it on here. ( I know I don't have any readers yet, let me take baby steps and pretend a while). I found it through a re-tweet from my science methods teacher whom I follow using Google Reader because he suggested it in our class (I think), but also in another later course that I did not actully take that he placed entirely on the web so people like me could learn from what his course was doing anyway. All the learning with none of the $$ and credit. Does he know I've written this?....Duh, no, I told you baby steps and get the stupid stuff out of my system before I go more public.
Oh yes, the video...so Robert Duke is telling me all the things I already believe and want to hear about the things I am thinking about how my classroom will run this first year of teaching 7th grade science. I am so interested in all of this I can't nearly get enough. But will watching these help me be a better teacher? I am hoping that this stuff (good teaching) will slowly become part of my DNA (pardon the cliche) so that I will begin to automatically create the type of classroom I envision. You see, I was not taught the way I want to teach, so I am needing to be very determined in my thinking and actions to be what I want to be. It is not second nature yet and so takes a lot of brain space. How much of that gray squishy stuff does a first-year teacher have to give over to being different than they would instinctively be. You naturally teach the way you have been taught. Naturally. How fast can I change that? I will need to be unnatural for some time before nature changes its tune and the drum in my head matches the drum in my heart.
Interesting, this is my third edit of this post and I see that writing a blog will make me put my ideas into a more succinct form. Score one for taking the risk.
Hmm. Are you talking college? I can't remember how I was taught very much in younger years- only the dynamic good experiences. Like dissecting a cat in Mr. Byer's Advanced Biology class. At the end, we had a funeral for our cats to the dumpster. Like playing Lady Macbeth in my Junior English Class, and performing one Act of it onstage. Like surveying people in front of the grocery store about where they were when Martin Luther King was shot as part of a major project for Government. Okay, not grammatically correct, but those are things I remember! Not the worksheets I filled out, or the chapters I read out of a textbook. You go, Girl. Follow your instincts!
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