Soaking It In, Weirdness and All

We received some sound advice from Dr. Shumway and in his words ‘its free of charge; he said ‘if your just a normal teacher, completely accepted by society, then the students might walk all over you, but if you’re just a little off, a little weird and crazy they love and respect you.’ Shum is loved and respected by his students and he is a little off so I think his theory holds some truth.
I’ve had a bit of a fear with being accepted by my students. I guess I just want the respect that I’ll give them. I’ve noticed I teach with a little weirdness, I’ve always been a little off, so hopefully Shum’s theory holds true with me as well. I guess we’ll see.
We visited Pleasant Grove High School and the major thing that I noticed was how well behaved the kids were. Such a difference between jr. high and high school. I’m not sure what I was expecting. So from that I became a little bit less afraid of high school kids. Surprisingly I haven’t lost my excitement for teaching; in fact I become more and more excited every time we get a chance to observe.
Mr. Anderson had the kids working on a big architecture project and I liked the way he structured the assignment and that was splitting up the project into several steps and then having the students get checked off or graded for those specific parts. So instead of giving them a big project that takes a long time to complete; you break it up, and have them get checked off for each step they have completed. This helps in a lot of ways; it helps the teacher know how fast the students are working so if the majority of the students need more time or less time you can adjust a due date accordingly. , its a good indicator of skill level for each student, and it helps with organization.
I wish we could observe more. I find myself trying to soak up everything so as to be as prepared as I can be when I enter the teaching field. I even go as far as writing down quotes that teachers have up on their walls to end I’ll leave you with this little gem by Albert Einstein that I spotted in Mr. Anderson’s room: “Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school”