The Classroom

It happens to all of us… some how, some where, despite all your best efforts you feel like you let your students down.  Perhaps they don’t do well on a standardized test.  Maybe its the in ability for them to grasp a concept that you’ve spent months on.  Inevitably it’s going to happen.  One or more of our students are going to fall, despite our best efforts – and what will you do then? Read the rest of this entry »

I know I keep referring to my first principal, Bill Drake, in a lot of my writings. The man had a profound effect on me. His motto of “Teach as you would like to have been taught” is the foundation for most of my educational beliefs. It’s a concept I had already subscribed too long before I met Bill, but to hear him say it and reinforce that belief was what I needed at the time.

So how did I like to be taught? How did you like to be taught? How do we know? The answer is simple. Think of your favourite teacher – and what made them so. It’s what I did. I’ve based my entire teaching practices upon what I can remember of my grade 5 teacher, Mr. Glance. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m one of those bloggers who loves to check his stats. I look at them all the time. I like to see where people who view my site are from, what pages they look at, and what brings them to my blog in the first place. It never ceases to amaze me however, that people from all over the world are drawn to my site on a routine basis due to the same keyword search: “What makes a good teacher?”

Now I actually find that funny, as I only ever did one post on the subject, and with the exception of the four initial comments, no one has ever decided to add their voice to the discussion. But I get many hits each week with people looking for the answer. Sorry folks, there is no right answer. Everybody learns differently, and so a good teacher is different for each student. That’s not to say that there aren’t some commonalities that can be found in most good teachers, but we have to remember that “it takes different strokes to move the world”.

Knowing that it takes many different types of teachers to reach the many different types of students, I have to ask – what exactly is it that teachers do? Why are we here? Read the rest of this entry »