Blog Post #9

In blog post #9 we were supposed to summarize Mr. McClung's article, "What I've Learned This Year.":

Mr. McClung explains what he learned after his first year of teaching at an elementary school in Missouri.
First, he explains that while in school getting his degree he lost track of what his job was as the one given lectures or instructions. He began worrying more about what his fellow peers/teachers thought about him instead of what the students were getting from him. I feel that this is for the most part correct, but unlike Mr. McClung I feel that many teachers do not realize this after just one year.
Next, he talks about how he realized that he was trying to teach the perfect lecture and forgot about him most important role as a teacher. He explains that teachers must learn to become flexible with their students because often they will not understand everything you cover and after re-teaching some of the material you will lose track of the 'perfect plans.' I feel that this can be worked around if teachers have a general outline of the things that need to be gone over for a particular day. If this material is not covered on that day then I will make sure to plan the next day around what was missed so there is no material missed.
The next point he talks about is communication. Personally I have learned that by communicating with someone about problems make things so much easier in the long run. It may not be easier at the time, but by talking things over it really does make things go smoothly as Mr. McClung has pointed out.
Mr. McClung's next point is one that I feel we get from college professors and take it with us back to grade school as teachers. Some teachers really do make their standards too high while some remember those days when they were students and recall the situations students' faced in school. By being 'reasonable' as McClung puts it you will have a much more positive reaction from students and they will be much more productive in your classroom.
The next point is one that I have really learned a lot about this semester thanks to this class. Teachers must learn to use technology and not be afraid of it. It has been created for us to use and benefit our students so that they may learn in easier/more exciting ways compared to a text book.
Being in college with over 100 students in classrooms it becomes much harder to know each student personally, but McClung talks about how good teachers listen to their students. By having their classmates or teacher there for them when they need to be heard it makes students feel important and cared about. It also makes students more likely to talk about personal problems in those particular situations.
McClung closes with what I consider to be him most important point of the entire article. As teachers we never stop learning. There are so many things he learned in his first of teaching and I am not a full-time or even part-time teacher yet, but in thinking like a teacher I feel that I have learned many great things that some teachers never realized. By learning from other teachers and reading articles like Mr. McClung's I have learned how to be a much better teacher than I could have ever imagined. By looking at other's experiences I have learned what the many pitfalls are and how they can be avoided so to Mr. McClung and the many others sharing their reflections I say, "Thank you."