Teaching There
From the desk of Alice…
After writing about the way my own children have fallen in love with learning, I started wondering about the teachers who are nurturing this along. Given all the demands of the current classroom, how are they sorting through the ideas and requirements to keep the student in mind?
So, I posed the question to them, “How do you keep the students in mind when planning your instruction?” Here were their responses:
“I always ask myself how I can make this/these lesson(s) interesting, especially to my boys. And how can the kids practice the concepts using as many modes as possible.”
“I’ve always leaned heavy on being child centered, rather than teacher directed. I’m a very tactile learner, so that is automatic for me. Ultimately, my goal is to respect each learning style and make sure I’m reaching my visual learners, as well as my auditory learners.”
“I believe our students’ individual needs should be the driving force behind our daily planning. The curriculum is designed to guide us, assessments are mandated to keep us accountable, but how we deliver instruction must be crafted to meet the specific needs and learning styles of our children. Open ended tasks and hands on exploration allow children to progress at their own pace and show individual growth over time. Each child has specific learning needs. One of our greatest challenges is to follow the many state mandates while keeping the flexibility to tailor instruction to meet individual needs and help our young learners grow and thrive.”
What spoke to me about these three approaches is the thoughtfulness of each teacher. Somehow they have managed to give themselves the gift of TIME to be thoughtful about instruction. They are not going through motions just to check things off the list. They don’t “do math” because they have to or pull small groups because that is the trend. Instead, they are being strategic about the instructional decisions they make and have grounded them in the solid belief that they are teaching students – not subjects. In order to be strategic, they must take the time to think about them. In this hustle, bustle, crazy world of education where everything is moving at the speed of light, they have managed to slow down and really focus on the instruction that best benefits their students, and adjust as needed.
As you kick off your summer, consider how you can give yourself the much-needed time to think, sort through the chaos, and make instructional decisions built around the most important part of the classroom- the students.