Blog Post #9

What I've Learned

Joe McClung is a fairly new teacher who has been teaching for a young 3 years. For each year that Mr. McClung has taught he has followed the school year with a blog post called "What I've Learned This Year". Each of the blog post summarizes his year as a teacher. He has done 3 post for each year, his 3rd year, 2nd year and 1st year. I chose to focus my attention on Mr. McClung's 2nd and 3rd year post's. I learned a lot from Mr. McClung's post, but more so he made me excited to one day be experiencing these things for myself. In college we think about teaching in a light, we as students think we are going to be perfect teachers with perfect students, schools and colleagues. I think most of us picture our careers different then they actually turn out to be. I think that this is something that he covers in his first post. Things turn out different than we expect, but what is important is that we learn something positive from it.

I appreciated that Mr. McClung says in his 2nd year post that it is important to sell what your teaching. I couldn't help but recall Randy Pausch's Last lecture when he was talking about of his first boss. He said his boss told him that he was a good salesman and what better to sell than education. A salesman can be described as someone who is aggressive, motivational and believable. I think all of these things are vital to teaching. It is important when selling something to make it sound like a good thing,and to make it sound life changing. Education is both of these things. I now look at education as a item I am excited about selling and know I will make a gratifying profit in return (seeing children succeed). Next in the post I really enjoyed reading about Mr. McClung's "school mom" or (moms). I couldn't help but be reminded of a woman who I am currently taking a class with Amanda Lloyd. I have done projects with Ms. Amanda, but also call on her and communicate with her outside of class. I feel like Ms. Amanda, with no offense to age, is like a "class mom" to me. I feel like she has mentored me in ways she might not even realize. I have had a difficult time throughout my engagement of people telling me what a mistake I am making by being so young. When working on a project, Ms. Amanda told me she enjoyed getting married and having her children young. She was encouraging to me not only because she supported my choice of marriage, but because I can recognize similar beliefs in me and her. I can see where Mr. McClung advice can come in handy it is important to cling to people that can be these figures to us.

In Mr. McClung's post after his 3rd year I enjoyed reading about how one of his "school mom's" told him about training someone when she worked for an airline. She talked about how they had a no touching the keyboard policy when training. Like he says in his post, it is important to take this approach in teaching. If you take over and end up doing the work for your student they will never master the skill. I experienced this just last week while doing some field experience. I was asked to help a sweet little girl finish her math work. We were rush by 13 other 7 year olds who were waiting on us so they could go to PE. While it would have been easier to take over the reigns and assume she would catch up later, I had to sit back with patients and help her master the math problems with what help I could offer other than the answer. Taking time and showing her different ways of resolving the problems, she would move on and would use methods on her own.

There are a lot of different valuable things to take from each of these post's. I realize after reading the comments on the post's that there will always be different opinions of what is right and what is wrong, but something that is clear throughout Mr. McClung's post is that what matters is the Students! I think it is important to take everything with a spoon full of sugar and filter it for what fits you best. I think as I mature throughout life and as a teacher I will have to find what works for me and what benefits my student's the most. I am excited to experience my own classroom and appreciate the attitude that Mr. McClung has put out there. I feel like he did a good job of being realistic and also focusing on what matters most, Students!!