Little "Lessons" Learned

My trip to the conference's bookstore today went something like this:

Some for the classroom library...Some for gifts...And some for me.

As you can very well imagine, my credit card wasn't so happy about these purchases, but hey, I was, because those books for me, they are for pleasure reading. :)

And, to tell you the truth, it could have been a lot worse. With stellar speakers and leading professionals in various fields of education recommending more books that you could count on your fingers (and toes), it was pretty hard to resist the impulse to rush straight to the shelves to buy every book suggested.

But I did resist - if only a little. And I came to the conclusion that I was able to do this for a few reasons...

1) Books and materials don't make great lessons, teachers do. I heard it over and over, even if it wasn't stated outright: You need the passion and the creativity, and you need the gumption to try ideas that are out of the box (and out of this world, if necessary). Books can be a great starting point for ideas, but there's a lot of free stuff already on the web, so I think it'd be wise to start there, wouldn't you agree?

2) Teaching should be responsive and fluid, not scripted. MULTIPLE presenters shared the importance of creating classroom environments that encourage the students to think more critically and engage in more meaningful dialogue with you and, more importantly, with their peers. While you as the teacher may want the lesson to go down a specific path, your lesson may not (and should not) necessarily take the path you planned. You can still get to the same result - increased knowledge about a certain subject - but the way you get there if you let the reins go to the students might be more meaningful and thoughtful than you expected. (Don't get me wrong - I use Lucy Calkins for writing in the classroom, but I definitely reword some of her lessons and make examples so that the lessons become my own.)

3) Just because it works for one teacher, doesn't mean it works for all. Now, in all fairness, Ron Clark, Kelly Gallagher, etc. are all incredible people and educators, but a) they work with an older age range, and b) I'm not them. Yes, I can get ideas from them - see what they have done, how things have been set up in their classrooms, etc., but I can't go into my classroom with their ideas without first changing them to fit my personality and teaching style. If I did, I think my students would call me out in a heartbeat because I wouldn't be authentic. Again, that's not to say I can't learn from these people, but it's also to say that I shouldn't spend all my time trying to follow someone else's example and style when I could better spend my time developing my own.

So, those are my basic reasons (as discovered over the past several days of the conference) how I actually saved my bank account. I feel that these "lessons" are also important take-aways professionally - we should always be striving to be better by "stealing" the ideas/lessons of other great teachers, shaking those up, and making them our own.

As any teacher could tell you, there's never a dull moment - it's a constant challenge to keep up. But it's a challenge that I'm learning more and more to embrace.