Mindset

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Permalink Reply by Kate Fanelli on March 6, 2009 at 6:56pm

I hope I am this type of teacher. If I'm not, it is certainly my goal to be that type of teacher. I think that cultivating that mindset is not only the first step to understanding how to use technology in the classroom, but the first step to innovating or improving anything in the classroom. It is also the basis for staying sane and staying in the game for the long run, regardless of the tools you use.

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Permalink Reply by Durff on March 7, 2009 at 1:08pm

I have the same hopes for me. I aspire to be a learner / follower and not the sage on the stage kinda teacher.

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Permalink Reply by Kate Fanelli on March 7, 2009 at 7:25pm

I find teaching to be inevitably humbling.

If you pursue new ideas through PD or Classroom 2.0, you are always humbled by the amount of stuff you could be doing and by the amount of stuff other people are doing.

But even if you aren't connecting to professionals outside of the classroom, there are always those students who will keep you in your place whether invited to or not.

If you aren't ok with learning from other people, or being wrong in front of other people, teaching would be a pretty tough profession. One of the things I like most about teaching is my ability to evolve. Teachers have a lot of control over how their classrooms run, and that allows us to innovate at the speed of our own choosing, and to design classrooms to suit our own preferences. We can change the entire direction of the classroom tomorrow if we want to. Evolving is easy. Being wrong and learning from other people is what drives the evolution.

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Permalink Reply by Kelli on March 9, 2009 at 1:32pm

This is absolutely my goal as a teacher!
I am in my last quarter of student teaching. These words reflect everything I have learned so far and hope to be!

Thanks so much!

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Permalink Reply by Sam Walker on July 12, 2009 at 10:58am

Amen - I've always known I'm not the smartest person in the classroom and as I get older I better embrace failure. Put of failures comes some of our greatest successes. Sometimes you have to go through that failure to understand how to succeed. How do you make this mindset contagious? My best answer is - model it - like you would for your students.

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Permalink Reply by Greg Gorman on July 12, 2009 at 12:26pm

These words are so true and make so much sense, we need to convince the schools of education at colleges and universities that this is the way to train new teachers. A couple of other thoughts-if they aren't learning the way you teach, then teach them the way they learn. Also our profession is not about teaching but student learning. Have many more thoughts about our profession but don't want to bore you.

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Permalink Reply by Kev on July 13, 2009 at 7:28am

Boy, I'll be honest this sounds like gibberish to me. I know teachers who hardly use technology that fit all those descriptors and teachers who live on technology who don't fit a single one.

I personally have a serious issue with the "not the smartest person in the room" comment. I've heard it time and time again since I started teacher training in 2002. Of course I'm the smartest person in the room. I'm 20 years older than these kids, have about 10 years more schooling than they do, and actively seek to improve my knowledge of my content and practice. Do I still learn from my kids? Of course I do. Do I have kids who test at a higher IQ than I do? Sometimes, yes. That still doesn't change the fact that I am the sage in that classroom.

I guess it depends on how one defines "smartest" but for me it is having the wisdom to apply proper knowledge in the the proper situation.

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Permalink Reply by Kate Fanelli on July 13, 2009 at 8:12am

I'm not sure it's about being the smartest person in the classroom. I think "room" refers to the profession in general, or maybe your school building or conference room. Even if you are smarter than your students (which I agree, most of us ought to be), it doesn't mean you can't learn something from them (usually something that goes beyond your academic content), or make mistakes in front of them, or realize that you need to improve/change/evolve as a teacher to teach them better, or learn from other professionals in your field. I think that's what most of us are saying. Well, at least it's what I was saying.

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Permalink Reply by Philip "Brad" Woolley on July 13, 2009 at 8:44am

Having had a technology enriched program for the past 16 years I can honestly say that I try to keep learning in my class a two way street. Granted I am the facilitator but I always look for ways the students can teach me new things. I am the immigrant and while I immigrated back in the early 80's I am still an immigrant. Just as all of you are my mentors so are my students. I would agree that I am the smartest person in the room with the most amount of training I would also state that even when I was teach severely handicapped populations early on in my career, I still found that I could learn from them daily. Isn't that what life long learning is all about. It's the mind set- not the technology.

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