Skip to main content

CORE Beliefs

With the creation of a new blog, it feels right that the first post should be about my core beliefs as a teacher:

I believe in learning from others teachers and not from a canned program.
I believe in re-inventing the wheel and in innovation, even when others say not to.
I believe in ending sentences with prepositions, especially because others say not to.
I believe in making things better, even when they aren't broken. Life is a work in progress.

I believe in the power of choice and autonomy.
I believe in individual decision making and responsiveness.
I believe that teachers can be trusted to do their jobs.
I believe that nerds are the only people you should surround yourself with. They know and show what they are passionate about.

I believe that books can, and do, save lives.
I believe that classroom teachers are more important than computers. Robots are incapable of developing relationships like humans. No computer chip can detect and help lessen the burden of a chip on someone's shoulder.

I believe that talk, reading, and writing are essential to student learning.
I believe in a resurgence in the teaching profession.
And I believe that others need to be shown how to appreciate teachers and not to objectify, politicize, or envy the difficult and rewarding work that teachers undertake everyday.
I believe in teaching and I believe in teachers.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Handwritten Cue Cards in the 21st Century

I just stumbled upon this behind-the-scenes clip of Saturday Night Live's cue card process. This is intense writing. This is writing that is dependent upon trust and checks and balances. Over a short period of time, skits are written, drafted on cards, revised, and the cards revised over and over again. I also really love that SNL continues to use cue cards and not a teleprompter. Like Wally points out, technology can fail. Handwritten cue cards ensure the show goes on. Comedy is hard work. Writing is hard work. Changes are made up until the last minute to get things just right. This is a form of real-world writing.
1 comment
Read more

Six Things to Keep in Mind When Your Class is NaNo-ing

Students recently drafted their reflections about National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), so I wrote beside them about the lessons that I had learned. Here they are: Limit the other work you give . While you may feel the pressure to have copious assignments in your grade book (there tends to be a sort of teacher shaming if you don't have many assignments in, as if there is a magical number), you have to recognize what is valuable and what is not, especially during the 30-day writing frenzy that NaNoWriMo is. I tried to make every assignment relevant for the month and their novels. Students encountered "daily challenges" (these quickly turned into every-other-day challenges) that focused on many of the necessary elements to good novels: dialogue, story world development, character creation, subplots, etc. Everything was designed so that students could use their work in their novels, and it allowed me to have short glimpses of the types of things they were writing abo
1 comment
Read more

Past Secretaries of Education

After last night's hearing with nominee DeVos, I decided to research past education secretaries. Senator Alexander talked a lot about "precedent" when it came to procedures regarding the HELP Committee. Let us remember that the first education secretary was appointed in 1979. That's the same year that Congress created the department under Jimmy Carter. This is also the same department that Ronald Reagan promised to abolish. Even the first education secretary had experience in government. Shirley M. Hufstedler was both a federal and state appeals court judge. I'm going to say that because of that experience, she's probably familiar with law and how laws work. As we saw last night, when Betsy DeVos was redirected a question because her answer implied that states could choose to implement federal law or not, she might need a refresher. Then we had Terrel Bell, who was a high school teacher, bus driver, and served in the Marines. Again, a long list of public
2 comments
Read more