Respect: Demand or Give?

Some people say that you should demand respect from your students. I think that you should always start by giving them respect. When they see that you're willing to treat them like an adult (this is at a high school level) then they're more willing to cooperate with you in the classroom. Most of the time, that is the case.

However, when you are giving a student respect and they are choosing not to reciprocate, that is when you demand it, or rather, command it. You are the teacher. You are in control in that moment. You do not need to yell or shout in order to get them under control. You simply tell them what is expected of them and see it through.

The Best Teacher Ever

The best teacher I ever had was my mom. I was homeschooled for grades 2-5 & 9. She was so creative and she made learning fun. Her philosophies about education inspired me to become a teacher. She also homeschooled my brother and my sister. She always chose to put us in the best possible situation for our education and gave us the support we needed.

Every year, we had a theme for our classroom. One year we studied Native Americans and another year we studied the Great Lakes. We would do a full immersion into the subject. We learned geography and history and we learned about culture.

Every Friday was reading day. She would take us to the library and we would read all day. She set up a fort for each of us and would bring us snacks so we could read in comfort.

She was creative with our physical education too. She put us in sports and dance classes and hired physical trainers. She made us each learn to play the piano and at least one other instrument.

During the summer, she would enter us into reading contests at the library to challange us and keep our academic levels up during the summer. We were usually the kids who had read the most books.

I want to be a teacher more than anything because of my mom--the best teacher I ever had.

Worst Teacher Ever?

During this semester of student teaching, I want to respond to a series of questions that they handed us on orientation day. I feel that this will be a good exercise in self-discovery.

The first question is:
If a student said she thought you were the worst teacher she ever had, what would you say?

Actually, something similar to this happened during a lesson I taught once. I was trying to teach 10th graders summarizing skills. I thought I would make it fun by having them trace their hand and write the main idea on the palm and the supporting details on their fingers. I had the class reading magazine articles for this assignment. Most of the class was confused by the project and I had to repeat my directions several times. Finally, one girl said: "You're a bad teacher."

My heart fell. Those were words I never wanted to hear from a student. I had worked so hard to make an activity that wasn't boring or routine and she had thrown it up in my face like it was filth. I scowled at her and told her she was rude and to continue working.

I went home and thought about the lesson that afternoon. She was rude to say it. But I needed to have more classroom management and preparation in order to pull that lesson off.

Of course my response to a student calling me a bad teacher would vary on circumstance, but I think that my initial reaction would be to reflect on my behavior and the lessons I had planned and think about whether they were meeting the needs of my students.

Jane Austen Knits, 2011 - Interweave

Jane Austen Knits, 2011 - Interweave

Shelfari

At first, I thought this website was erroneous, but now I can see how it would be a good tool to give students the link to your Shelfari to help spark their interest in books that their teacher is reading. Here is the link to my profile:
http://www.shelfari.com/o1515169195/shelf

Glogster

Glogster is a website that allows you to create a virtual poster! It's a little hard to get started, but once you're used to it, the site is quite user friendly. I designed this poster for a unit on the Dust Bowl.

Does character matter?

I was sitting in church last Sunday thinking about Christina Rosetti and a thought floated to my mind. "Does character affect what an author writes?"

In today's world, so many people argue that a person's private life has nothing to do with their professional one. I disagree. I think that every experience we go through in life affects how we look at things. This is especially true with authors.