Why am I writing this personal entry? Well, it is not an attempt to gain any sympathy. It attempts to show what is possible if a clear intention and goal serve the learner's needs. In May of 2022 just near the end of another fantastic school year, I do not remember what happened. But, I was unable to finish the school year and was unable to teach the following year. Why? On May 21st, 2022, I fell down a flight of 16 stairs (luckily carpeted) from the 2nd to 1st story of our home. I was found at the bottom of the stairs. I was found foaming at the mouth. This would lead to a 2-month hospital stay which included an induced coma because my seizures would not stop, several rounds of lumbar punctures, and relearning basic physical movements like something as simple as being able to roll in the hospital bed. Simply put, when I was admitted to the hospital, I was diagnosed as being “critically ill.” Please take a moment and read those words: critically ill. They are not terms...
When I saw Dave Burgess present this week, the buzz in the room after was amazing. But it seemed like the many of us felt that we could never do that, myself included. A big takeaway from Dave is not that he wants us to do that but do that. Let me explain what I mean. Dave is a teacher who brings his interests, his strengths, and his passions to his teaching. He is using who he is to create his voice as a teacher. That means he will do magic tricks. That means he will use his love of theatrics. That means he will bring his mad MC skills to throw down some high velocity prose. Teaching like a Dave doesn’t mean trying to do magic or trying to speak at 200 words per minute. It means bringing yourself into the classroom. If I’m going to teach like a pirate, it won’t be by putting on a Dave Burgess mask. To teach like a pirate, I need to be comfortable with putting who I am in front of my classroom and leveraging everything I bring to engage and empower my learners.
So that requires doing a true inventory of who I am. A couple of years ago, I completed a learner preferences document that was framed in terms of Universal Design for Learning. The preferences template was created by Barbara Bray and Kathleen McClaskey. It’s something my learners do and I give an example of my form as a learner. But, maybe I need to complete a Teaching Preferences document looking at my strengths, challenges, interests, and aspirations. I reframed the learner presences document to a teacher preferences document. I then completed it following some prompts.
Identifying strengths, challenges, and preferences & needs when it comes to the following in the role as a teacher:
Engagement: When are you most excited as a professional?
- Think about content pieces you cover
- Think about skills you teach
- Think about other aspects of your job
- Grading
- Designing instruction
- Giving Feedback
- Reflecting on your practice
- Collaborating with others
- Think about your flow through times of day and times of the year
Access: How do you learn new methods or grow as a professional?
- How do you keep up with your content?
- How do you keep up with pedagogy?
- How do you process new information?
- How do you connect with other professionals?
- How do you reflect on your practice and new ideas?
Express: How do you teach, prepare to teach, and carry out the other aspects of your profession?
- Think about preparing lessons
- Consider large group instruction
- Consider transitions
- Consider student-directed work time
- Consider providing and soliciting feedback
- Consider communication with parents
- Consider formative assessment
- Consider summative assessment
- Consider how you share your practice with peers
These are very broad categories that could easily be broken down into more different elements. I’ve just put some cursory questions/areas to drive thinking, but these are just off of the top of my head. I think that developing guiding questions or statements in each category would make this a truly powerful process for teachers to evaluate themselves without the stigma of a traditional evaluation.
Preferences & Needs is where one can start thinking about how being mindful of yourself as you work at your craft. What works for me? What brings out the best in me as an educator? What is required for me to feel the most confident about my ability to be an amazing educator?
Just because something is considered a challenge, doesn’t mean it should be abandoned. But this is not a great tool to help educators face challenge areas and grow. The amazing Tara Martin has developed a great tool to guide teachers along a path for growth and facing challenges. She has developed the R.E.A.L. + Innovator’s Compass Process.
You can read more about it here on her blog. But what’s even more powerful is to have her walk you through the process through the power of her own unique voice in the video below.
Interests, Talents, and Passions are what define you are as a person. Why would you put them in a locker at the start of your workday. Don’t check your passion at the door. That’s where your enthusiasm, your fire, your YOU comes from. That’s what’s going to make your lessons come to life. This doesn’t just mean bringing your passions to pair on your content. There are days where I can bring my love of the Marvel Cinematic Universe into a physics lesson. But, there are days when I can just talk about dogs with a student. These conversations are where we build the relationships with our learners. When a learners know you as a person, they are more likely to feel comfortable asking for assistance when they get stuck. You become more than an authority figure behind a desk who delivers content. You become a person who shares - a person who a learner can share their learning journey with. You are no longer sitting on high in the throne of judgement. You are able to pull up a chair beside a learner as a source of guidance.
This leads me to understand what I need to leverage as a teacher: my strengths, talents, interests, and passions. But that’s not the end of the story. It’s just the introduction. My voice is important as a teacher to put my passion on display and get me fully engaged in my lesson. But, my ultimate goal is to get my students engaged in the learning! That’s where you need to elicit the same ideas from your learners in terms of their strengths, challenges, needs, interests, aspirations, and passions. That’s what will inform your instruction.
If you see that your strengths aren’t aligned to a student’s needs, that is a sign that you need to challenge yourself and grow as an educator. That doesn’t mean that you need to take acting lessons to become a performer if a student needs it. That means you (and the learner) search out resources that will help meet their needs. You will never be able to TEACH all 100+ of your students in the way that meets their needs. But, you can help them LEARN in the way that best meets their needs. That’s your job.
Listening to Dave Burgess speak to the importance of our profession will not make you feel guilty about the times you may have lacked that passion in the classroom. His lessons will make you feel like taking action to bring your passion into the classroom. That is everything great teaching does. It’s not about getting student attention while you’re teaching. It’s about what happens when you’re done teaching. Are learners driven to act or are they just happy to be off the hook?
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