Blog Post #9

In this weeks blog post assignment, we were assigned to read two out of the four blog posts that Mr. McClung had written. When he wrote these, he wrote them at the end of each school year to be reflective on what he had done differently each year and how the students reacted to it. In his first reflective blog post "What I've Learned This Year", he was explaining how he was a fresh new teacher with little to no experience in the teaching field. In the first section of the blog it discussed "How to Read the Crowd" and how teachers are so concerned about lecturing that they fail to get the students' attention. I know from experience that if a teacher did not make a lesson interesting or exciting, I was not going to pay too much attention to it because of how they had delivered it. If the teachers had made it a hands-on lesson that would have gotten my attention. I do not work well with just the teacher lecturing. In the second part of the post it was titled "Be Flexible", meaning that everything does not have to perfect when teaching lessons and making activities for the students to complete. Because of my background I strive for perfection but after reading this section it made me realize that students are not really going to care about how perfect it is but how you as their teacher relate the lesson to them. Another section that I thought that was interesting was labeled "Be Reasonable." He stated that teachers set their students up for disappointment when they do not meet their teacher's goal. I do not want to be that teacher. I want to be the kind of teacher that if one of my students was having difficulty with the assignment, I would help that student with the assignment so that they do not fall behind.

For the second reflective blog post, I chose to read "Version 4 Post." In this blog post, Mr. McClung had just ended his fourth year of teaching. He wrote this post a little bit differently than his past three blogs. Instead of having four or more sections in the blog, he had only put two sections about what he had learned this past year of teaching. The two sections were: "You Gotta Dance With Who You Brought to the Dance" and "Challenge Yourself." In the first section, he was explaining how for some reason he was worried about what his peers (fellow teachers) thought of the way he was handling business; when normally, he was worried about how the students and his superiors thought of the way he was teaching. I personally will not care how other teachers think about my way of teaching but as long as my students are learning and my lessons are up to par with my superiors, then it would not bother me. In the second section, he explained how for the past three years he was stuck teaching the same thing (Social Studies and Arkansas History) and had gotten way too comfortable with the lessons, and the opportunity he had gotten for the coming year: teaching pre-AP civics and American Government. I hope that when I find a teaching job that I will not become too comfortable with the lessons because I do not want my students to become as bored with the assignments as I was when I went through school.


After reading these two reflective blog posts, I hope that I will become a better teacher from learning from the past year and using it for the year to come. With my mom teaching Family and Consumer Science, she never has had a dull day in the life of the classroom, because everything is changing and so she has to think of new ways to interact with her students to get them interested in either of these classes that she teaches: Fashion, Food and Nutrition, Housing, and Basics. When I enter the teaching field, I want to take what I have learned from EDM310 and find a way to incorporate it with my lessons and activities.