Three Epiphanies about Content-Area Learning

When I was right out of college I thought that I knew everything. I was most up to date on recent best practices, research, and teaching strategies. I thought that seasoned teachers would be learning from ME because there was no way that they had all of the most recent information. Oh boy, was I right!
Gotchya! You probably thought I was going to say wrong. I really was able to teach others a lot, but that doesn't mean that I wasn't still learning myself. I learned from teachers around me, I learned from my students, and I also learned a lot from my mistakes. For example, even since starting this blog I have learned a lot, and you might even call them epiphanies.

1. Lectures are not dead
2. Blogs can be pretty darn good resources
3. It is okay to not be perfect

The biggest "Ah-ha" moment for me was when I realized that the worlds oldest teaching technique, the lecture, wasn't dead. The lecture is coming back in style and it has a new and improved image. The best advice that I learned was that the lecture is a good way to get across so much information, but it needs to stay brief. The length of the lecture needs to be short in order to accommodate for all attention spans, but also to simply keep the information overload to a minimum. The short lecture should be wrapped up with an application activity of sorts that allows the student to apply the information that they just learned. In recent months I found myself trying to jump through hoops and breathe fire to keep up with the new expectations to keep lessons engaging for students. Then, I realized that I don't need to reinvent the wheel I can just revamp the old ways.

In the first few months I really was teaching others quite a bit; I had a lot to share and it was an incredible feeling to be knowledgable. Now, don't get me wrong, I learned A LOT from them as well, but their teaching strategies had been well used and were oldies but goodies. I thought to myself, "I want to always stay in the know and constantly aware of the cutting edge teaching techniques." Then a couple months went by and I realized that I was just teaching and not expanding my teacher's tool belt at all. What I learned in college was what I stuck with. While creating this blog I realized the importance of constantly researching the most recent laws, teaching strategies, and best practices. Reading through academically worded journals and research based essays takes a lot of time and can be cumbersome, and then I discovered the wonderful world of blogs! I never previously looked at blogs as educational resources, but they have so much to offer! I am now able to look at fun, creative, and easily legible sites that offer valid, current information. The best part about blogs is that they also include personal experiences which add a dash of realness that most educational journals are missing. I once was worried that blogs were bogus, but now I know they have awesome information that In can read quickly and get great research based techniques in minutes.

As a special educator I am part of a team; I am part of a co-teaching team. I have three people and three classes that I co-teach with, but I don't have any time to actually co-plan. In the ideal world we should be using all of the co-teaching models and working as a united front to best educate our students, but that doesn't always happen. I felt like I was failing as a teacher and colleague. I didn't know what I could do to make it better. Then, I had an epiphany: it is okay to not be perfect. Teaching models were created to try and benefit the student learning, but they were designed with perfection in mind in regards to the co-teaching and the actual environment that you are to be teaching in. I am not dealing with perfection by any means and I am doing my best. I am okay with adapting what I have available to me to make new strategies work to the best of my ability. Perfection is not easy and it is okay to not be perfect!