Learning from What He Learned

Mr. McClung offers a great post at the At the Teacher's Desk blog. His perspective especially interested me because of his freshness in the field of education. The post was written at the end of his first year in the classroom. I noticed another EDM 310 class blogger offered thanks to McClung for his "humble" advice. It took me a few moments to consider what about this writer demonstrated humility. Then, I realized it.

It is easy for anyone, especially someone young or new in a field, to think he or she knows all. There are many teachers who, when students don't learn, blame the students for the various alleged reasons they don't get it. Such teachers never take a moment to consider they could be partially or totally to blame. From the outset, McClung suggests there were many times he was hard on himself for not presenting material as well as he would have liked. He honestly said there were times when he taught without being audience-centered. It takes a humble person to admit errors and acknowledge areas of needed improvement. Even more, he does this on a public blog, into which any of his adminstrators might stumble and see the points in which he views himself as previously inferior. As he said, "[the students] are not perfect and neither are we."

Why else would we in an EDM 310 class like McClung? Could it be because he is an advocate of technological literacy among teachers. He said,

Grown adults everywhere are afraid of computers like it's a bad horror film and computers are trying to take over the world. Technology is our friend and is essential to living in our microwave society of today. We should not become overwhelmed by technology and simply give up before we start.

As the primary aim of his post, McClung gives several tips based on lessons he learned in his first year teaching in an elementary school. They are: (1) Know how to read the crowd, (2) Be flexible, (3) Communicate, (4) Be reasonable, (5) Don't be afraid of technology, (6) Listen to your students, and (7) Never stop learning.

Interestingly, McClung recorded lessons he learned, and I was reading his blog to learn what he learned. No matter what part of life is under consideration, everything we do is about learning what others learned what others learned, and so on. Someone else might read this post and learn what I learned from what Mr. McClung learned. It may be confusing, but it's certainly true!