I am not the same teacher I used to be. When I started, I was very focused on power and control. I assigned loads of homework, dished out huge penalties for late assignments, assigned punishments for rule breaking behavior and averaged my marks to get a final grade. I did some of these things because I was trained to do so in university. However, most of these teaching strategies were being done mindlessly, and like a lot of teachers, I was simply teaching the way I was taught.
This kind of teaching made me miserable, and to be honest, some of my students weren't that happy either. In November 2004, I began my journey towards uprooting some of the most deeply rooted myths that continue to distract people from a love for learning.
Today, my teaching is guided by a handful of principles. I believe:
Teachers should be less like judges-in-waiting who do things to students to garnish compliance and more like safe and caring allies where students are provided a learning environment where work with children in an effort to nourish their natural curiosity and desire to learn.
The best learning environments provide students with the opportunity to construct their own understanding while doing projects that are in a context and for a purpose while interacting with their environment.
My ten years of teaching experience has primarily been spent teaching unconventionally in a "traditional" public middle school. Recently, I have moved to a more unconventional classroom setting; I now teach at the local hospital where we provide short term crisis stabilization and inpatient assessment to children under the age of 18 who present with a wide range of mental health related difficulties.
