THINGS I LOVE ABOUT TEACHING!?!?

[Mike]

Hi All.... thought it might be fun to create a list of things we continue to love about
TEACHING!!!!

Here are a few of mine to start us off::

1. Providing a safe, comfortable, and encouraging place for troubled students kids.
2. Relating to students.
3. Teaching something brand new to a kid.
4. Having a student teach me something i never knew.
5. Seeing kids helping one another.
6. Watching kids mature over time. I have had kids in my room for as long as 4 years.
7. Putting a smile on a kids face.
8. Watching a student develop confidence in themselves.
9. Watching kids succeed at things they love doing
10.Trying to figure out different ways to try and teach a concept.
11. Designing ways for kids to become important and helpful to others. Giving them things to be responsible for.
12. Having fun!

So...feel free to add....

be well... mike

[Connie Weber]

Hi Mike,
Where'd you get that list? It's pretty good. It almost seems done; yes, if I do all that, I'm really accomplishing something.
Let's see, what can I add?
One thing, I'd like to be remembered by students not only as someone who moved them along in their various sorts of learning, but as someone who knew when to be patient. Someone who was willing to set other things aside, who waited, and let the waves of learning be ridden out. Does that make sense? I hope I make exploration safe and enticing---not pressuring and demanding. I'd like to be known as someone who allowed individuals to taste the knowledge or skills that they hadn't tasted before, who revved up their engines by allowing them to sample and try things out.
I'd like to be one of the teachers they remember who gave them Time.

Thanks for this discussion, Mike. I'm going to keep adding to it. Hope others add in, too!

[Shekhar]

1) Re- Learning with Kids ( be it smiling and ability to laught at self )
2) Being Creative
3) Thier ability to face issues and matters in this fast changing world- and accepting things
4) Desire - to be sucessful

[Nancy Bosch]

I love to read outloud to kids and have them hang on every word.
I love laugh with them.
I love kids who know more than I do.
I love kids who try something they percieve as difficult and be successful....
and all the stuff you said.

[Ian Carmichael]

Seeing the aha!'s light up in student eyes!
Having aha's light up my own!
Learning so I can teach.
Teaching so others can learn.
When student groups and I can work as a team
When staff are genuinely collegial.

Being set free to teach. (This is moving from what I love to what what I wish for!)

[ddeubel]

Good list but it almost could be infinite - really. For me, it all boils down to "Making a Difference". That difference is infinite, just depends on the teacher, student, place and time.

But also as Ian mentioned, so I can learn. That keeps me going forth.... (I'm selfish, who isn't?)

Here's a presentation I made and show at graduations, end of courses, orientations for beginning educators...
A great story to tell to teachers - so if you have to give a speech, maybe fit this in!

David

[Or-Tal Kiriati]

I agree with David. It's that "making a difference" - an I am not a teacher, but this seems to me like the main attraction. And when I do teach, like teaching my kids or their friends, this is what excites me.
I visited my son's first grade yesterday. Went them to talk to the 7 year olds about the effects of multiple bonfires on our health and the environment, including the ozone layer. (for the context of this event search for the word "bonfire" on this page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lag_Ba%27omer ).
Anyway, this was a fun conversation and the kids were amazing. They asked questions and contributed from their knowledge and processed the information and I really felt I was making some difference. That's a very rewarding feeling.

[Janice Robertson]

I love being the person that gets to hear a student try out a new thought; not one parroted from their parent, but an idea that is all theirs. I even love watching them try on different personas, and then I love watching them deal with the consequences of being the "class clown" or the "too cool to care kid". The growth that is evident in one year is always so incredible. I love to take first day of school shots, and then show them to the students during the last week. They're often as amazed as I am! I work with middle school students, and seeing them mature, and knowing I'm helping them develop into responsible citizens makes teaching an awesome job.
I also love helping them overcome whatever weakness they have to deal with, and ALL of us have something with which we have to deal!

[Mary Hricko]

Things I love about teaching:

1. the opportunity I get to rebuild a student's "shaken" confidence
2. the joy of learning even more about the subjects I share with my students
3. listening to learners teach others their new found knowledge
4. contributing to the social capital of knowledge through interaction with my students, colleagues, and others involved in the process of instruction
5. seeing my students overcome their "mental" hurdles about their academic abilities
6. witnessing how the transformative power of education occurs in just simple gestures
7. seeing students grasp the value of "wanting to know" the truth
8. watching students develop faith in education
9. the sense of connected-ness you feel when you are with your students--

[Ian Carmichael]

Thanks Mary,
No. 3 is a real pleasure, isn't it! The last few weeks of last term, I was privileged to eavesdrop on a couple of my maths students teaching others. (They looked up to let me take over, but I wouldn't! That's so great, for both me AND their confidence. [It's a noisy class, and with my bad hearing, I couldn't really tell whether I should have taken over anyway!!])

[Connie Weber]

This conversation just rocks. Oh! I sound like the students. But it's true.

Here's something that comes to mind for what I love about teaching: opening worlds, opening courage. I like to get the kids to try new things. I particularly like showing the students "real life" things--beyond any sort of "content."

Like how to catch and hold a frog--with clean hands, of course. (You don't want to get any soap or sunscreen on the frogs' permeable skin.) With extreme tenderness.

There's a look that comes into a child's eyes when she holds a frog for the very first time. I interview kids afterwards about what the experience is like, and get responses like this: "Oh, I thought it was going to be scary, or gross... but it was like magic. I could see the frog breathing, the way its throat went up and down. Before I was scared. Now I'm 'over it.' Let's go for more!"

Or teaching a student about garden-fresh food. I love it when a child eats tender young garden spinach and realizes she loves it. "I've never had spinach before--it's yummy. Can I have more?" (By the way, you can get kids to eat almost anything that they helped to grow or helped pick.

Or showing young people how to read the skies, how to understand weather. This doesn't work for everyone--some would like to just go inside and be safe when a storm is coming, and that's something to honor. But a few would like to stand outside and look squarely at the gathering thunderheads, feel the criss-crossing currents of warm and cold air, sense out the danger, gather information... I LOVE that kind of teaching.

I'm gearing up for summer camp right now, so maybe that's why the "real stuff" is on my mind. Not "curriculum content," but Life. Or, viewed differently, completely cross-disciplined curricula.

What I love best of the best in teaching is when the learning gets to happen in mixed-age groups. That's a great component of summer camp: have a big range of ages all together, from five to thirteen-year-olds, and counselors from HS through college. So a little kid can teach a big person how to hold a frog. Having all ages of kids in groups creates powerful learning dynamics. Think of small "cultures of learning" happening around some gardening task, or a woods exploration, or tending a cut on a horse's leg. Hmmm. I guess this is a named phenomenon, something like Informal Learning. Yeah, I'm a big believer in that.

Mike, thanks for starting this great conversation. I love reading people's responses! Shekhar, Nancy, Ian, David, Or-Tal, Janice, Mary: so good to hear your thoughts!

[Jess]

1)Realizing that more often than not, I learn just as much as the students. It may not be about the subject I'm teaching (although sometimes it is!), but could be about them, or the way students learn, or the way they interact and respond to me as well as one another.
2)I also LOVE how there is at least one thing every single time that makes me secretly smile when I catch a precious moment from one of the students. It could be something they say or do; either when they think no one is watching or involving me or another student. I've been thinking about keeping a journal to write these little moments in to go back through on rough days to cheer me up and get some laughs.

[Janet Navarro]

I love how teaching allows you to be present in the moment with people...
It's funny, I used to love planning creative lessons (and still do) but saw the planning process as the creative work almost more than the interaction with people around those plans. It was about MY plan and carrying that plan out. What's changed for me is that the planning process is now more conceptual, more open ended. I try to get a better big picture sense of where the group ought to move in order to understand something and I think through different ways to take them on that journey. But, the real creative aspect of teaching for me is being IN the teaching moment with the group and with as many individuals in that group as will allow me in.

I also love how trust and patience works in the end.

I love the ongoing part of teaching. I mean, I love that I see students over and over and that what we can develop overtime can grow.

I love the break from teaching I get when I'm not teaching and think that I would react strongly to proposals about year-round schooling.