Blog Post # 9

Mr. McClung is recapping his first year in teaching in an elementary school in Noel, Missouri.  I was surprised to hear some of his comments that he found to be ground breaking, such as listen to your students.  I thought about this and then realized how easy it is to talk "at" someone and not to them.  This I think, is more of a problem than I had at first realized.  When you can truly communicate your lessons to the students, they can grasp the information and both the student and teacher get more out of the situation.  

I also found it funny how he felt it necessary to complete a lesson as if he were still being judged by an instructor or an administrator.  He's right that teachers must bring the lessons down to the level of the students.  It doesn't matter how well the principle thinks that a teacher is doing, if the students aren't comprehending the lesson then we as educators aren't accomplishing anything.

I think that many of the points that Mr. McClung went over in this blog are very important.  But, I felt that these were things that all teachers should already know, but perhaps I'm not quite close enough to the teaching part of my career to make such a judgement call.