Blog Assignment #9

At the end of Every year Mr.McClung writes a blog post about challenges and accomplishments he has faced while teaching. My blog assignment will cover his first year of teaching blog post and his most recent complete year of teaching blog post. In the school year 2009-2010, Mr.McClung shared his thoughts on what it was like his first year of teaching. Going into the year he did not quite know what to expect, so the best advice he could tell himself was to "stay positive". Mr. McClung feels that in that first year of teaching he has grown and matured both as a person and as a teacher. At The Teacher's Desk Is the first blog post that he made, in relation to his teaching experience. In this blog he shares some of his thoughts on how to become a more effective teacher. He talks about how to read the crowd (your students), how to be flexible, how to communicate, how to listen to your students, and how to be reasonable. All of which are areas in which many teachers differ.During his first year Mr.McClung realized that his way of thinking, needed much improvement. He use to feel like he worried so much about impressing his supervisor that he didn't do as good a job in teaching the lesson plans in ways that were most effective for his students. He has learned that you must be flexible because the lesson you plan is almost always different from the one you teach. He learned to stop always trying to control things. Mr.McClung advises teachers to communicate with each other and share what works for them and what does not work for them with other teachers, so that they are more productive in their own class.Realizing that not every student will meet the goals/standards that you set for them, does not make you nor them a failure. Our job as the teacher is to keep encouraging them to do better.

Mr.McClung's Blog on What I've Learned This Year was for the school year of 2011-2012(his 4th year of teaching). In this Blog Mr.McClung reflects on the previous three years blogs and has come to the conclusion that he did not learn as much as he thought he had this year. This fourth year he has come to care more about his reputation with his peers as oppose to previous years, where he cared what his students thought of him. It took Mr.McClung halfof the school year to stop worrying about what the other teachers thought of him, and instead he decided to stick to one rule and that rule was that the kids have fun, while at the same time learning.
Facing his third year teaching the same material Mr.McClung found himself becoming too routine and predictable and slowly started feeling his creativity diminishing. Lucky for Mr.McClung he had the opportunity to teach a new subject this up coming year. With this new subject well on its way, he has new found inspiration when creating the lesson plans for his new subject. The most valuable lesson he learned this school year was that, when you get to comfortable and too in the routine of things, that's when teachers become lazy and less creative.

What I took away from reading both of Mr.McClung's blogs is that teachers are what motivates the students, having fun lesson plans are a great way to engage students into learning while at the same time having fun, and also I learned that as a teacher routine equals lazy.I do not want to become a routine teacher.