Blog Post #9

I read the blog entries of Mr. Joe McClung written on May 27, 2009 and June 15, 2011 to see if his view of teaching had changed very much over three years. On the latter blog post I noticed right away that he had added a picture of his students to the post which clearly showed him more at ease with technology. In both blogs he expresses the importance of the students. He reminds teachers that sometimes we teach lessons for our supervisors or instructors that are judging us and forget about whether the students comprehended anything or not. He reminds us to be reasonable with the expectations we set for our students and not set them up for failure. Not every lesson is going to go like we plan nor is it going to be perfect. In the last blog, he reminds us “not to touch the keyboard” because we will defeat the purpose of letting our kids learn by doing things themselves.
In both blogs he points out the need for communication between student and teacher and the teacher with other professionals. The only thing that really bothered me about the last blog is that he says he hangs out with his students and doesn’t really interact much with the rest of the faculty. I know this can be effective in relating to students but shouldn’t we interact on a professional level with our colleagues? I was surprised that he wrote that he was “immature” in this sense.
I do like the way in both blogs that he encourages teachers to never quit learning and to not get comfortable. His ideas of attending professional developments that seem interesting and being on committees that he has never served on are good ways of moving forward. It is very true that some teachers just become satisfied with what they do year after year and are never motivated or required to change. But like he points out, don’t let these kinds of teachers dampen your excitement to want to continue to learn new things and keep evolving into the best teacher you can be.