Thinking about Teaching

I'm a teacher, and I'm thinking today about how good I am. I'm going to start classes again on Monday, and I'm also going to have to attend classes at a local college of education - that same place that I was attacking in my last post. I'm not excited about the workload, but I'm getting anxious sitting here doing so little. I'm not the kind of person who does well with a lot of free time. I make big plans about all of the things I will do with that time, and I get very little done. I seem to thrive on being busy, and I don't know what to do when I'm not. That's not good for your heart, especially with a family history of heart disease.

So I'm sitting here planning out my classroom as much as I can. I'm not very happy yet with all of the plans, partly because there are so many things that I want to be able to do today. I can't get into my school during the break, so I can't get in there and start making the physical changes that I want to make. So I'm going to be scurrying around on Monday morning, arriving as early as traffic and coffee will let me, and trying to make things happen. I wanted to make the class look physically very different, but I'm not sure that it's going to happen. I don't know that I have enough time. I suppose I could do it on Monday evening after school, but how much can you get done in that short of a time?

I've mentioned the book that I'm reading to help me figure out more about how to plan a lesson and be a better teacher. It's How the Brain Learns by David Sousa. I'm finished now, and I think that reading his book has been very enlightening. This is the first time I've finished an entire teaching book, which says something. Maybe it says that I'm desperate. I don't know. But it suggests also that the book is valuable and readable. It presents ways that the brain retains information, retrieves it, and how to make these things work best in an instructional context. I would like to think that this has made me a better teacher - knowing more about these things - but we'll see.

Anyway, back to work at it. I hope to be as ready as can be come Monday.