Yet lately in my blog, that's all I've been talking about. Silly fancy new teaching techniques. Coming up with these ideal classroom intricacies when I know deep down inside it won't be at all near that ideal.
You always vow to never become like your parents, but then you get older and find yourself doing just that. Real life scares you to death so you fall back on the only thing you know: your own upbringing. Which can't be all that bad, since it got you that far. And what if your harebrained alternate ideas don't work?
To bring it all together, in a way I did not want to become just another teacher like the dozens I had, yet finding myself thinking, even if the alternatives worked, would they be all that better? Reflecting (how many is this? 9?) back on my high school days, the best teachers weren't the ones who dressed up like Abraham Lincoln or danced around the classroom or paused and praised me, they were the ones who merely knew and loved their subject. In this class, it's almost like we talk about lecturing as the disease of teaching, yet a good lecture is worth much more than an activity.
I'm really long-winded, I'm sorry, but one last example: we learn strategies like selling your topic by making it sound important to the student's life. But do I remember any reasoning behind my high school geology teacher's subject? I couldn't tell you even today why it's important to study geology, but I remember being interested in it anyway because my teacher loved it so much, and my learning was important to him. Same with the football coach who taught US history. Yet, they say that not until you fully understand the rules are you allowed to break them. Bring it on, TEE 276.
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