As any teacher will tell you, February can be one of the most difficult months of the school year, especially if you teach in New England and have to deal with the never-ending possibility of having your well-planned syllabus blown to smithereens by a snow day or 1-hour delay. As a result, I have found that February can be a great month to take some time to be more reflective about my teaching. I ran across several blog posts in the past week or so that allowed me to stop and ponder some of my practices and seriously reflect on my teaching that I thought you might find interesting as well.
- Redefining Teachers with a 21st Century Education ‘Story’ is a piece that comes from the Mind/Shift website that I found to be be quite inspirational. During the long winter days of February, I think we can all use a little inspiration.
- How Inquiry Can Enable Students to Become Modern Day de Tocquevilles is another piece from the Mind/Shift website that inspired me to think “outside the box” about what I do in class. Can I better incorporate my students’ voice in the design of my curriculum? I just may have a few ideas that may make their way into my classes in the coming weeks, how about you?
- 12 Myths About Student Engagement comes from the OpenColleges website and hammers home some important points about what true student engagement looks like in the classroom.
- Be The Best Version of Your Teacher Self is a post from one of the people I follow on Twitter, Chris Lehmann (@chrislehmann), the founding principal of the Science Leadership Academy. In this post, Chris addresses the need to bring an authentic sense of ourself to the classroom.
I hope that you find one or more of these pieces as thought provoking as I did. Enjoy!