R is for Relevant

During this holiday season, I thought it would be fun to use the word Christmas and apply it to education.

Today’s letter is R and R stands for relevant.

I have had to attend professional development meetings where nothing shared was relevant to my teaching situation. I felt it was a waste of my time and resented having to sit there through these things. Sometimes I brought work to do so that I felt I was using my time more wisely but it can also look rude to the speaker. Sometimes I even brought some crochet or knitting in order to help me pay attention.

The worst thing I can do when teaching a lesson to my students is to not explain how this new learning will be relevant to them. I need to show a connection to their current situation. Maybe what I’m teaching is a skill that will help them be successful in the future. Maybe this new skill is a foundation for something we are going to learn next. Maybe this skill is something that will make their life easier right now. If I can’t find some connection and show how it is relevant, then I need to scrap this lesson. I will be wasting their time and my time.

I would not give lessons to my students on how to drive a horse and buggy if they will never need this information. I would not teach a student how to write in calligraphy style if they will never use this skill. It is different if they show an interest and want to learn these things because this interest makes the learning relevant. But if they have no interest and there is no need, then I don’t need to teach it.

Maybe a lesson at the beginning of the year is not relevant at that time but later in the year, it might be. That will be an appropriate time for me to teach this lesson.

Teaching students that their tastes and interests may change over time and that this is okay is a valuable lesson. I’ve learned many new things over the past few years that I never thought I’d have an interest in learning. Years ago, it was not relevant to me but when I was interested in learning this specific thing, then it became relevant.

How do you decide what is relevant to your students? Please share.

Photo by Evelyn on Unsplash

H is for Happy

During this holiday season, I thought it would be fun to use the word Christmas and apply it to education.

Today’s letter is H and H stands for happy.

If you decide to teach, you need to be happy. You won’t be happy all of the time, but you need to make sure you are doing this for all the right reasons.

If you are doing it for a lot of money, you will never be happy.

If you are doing it because you think you are smarter than anyone else, you will never be happy.

If you believe that you can make a difference in someone’s life, you will end up feeling happy.

Students know when you are not happy doing what you are doing. I’m not saying that you need to smile and be happy every day but if you are happy, you will feel content and satisfied with your choice of profession.

Those who are not happy doing what they are doing become bitter, angry, and end up being very incompetent. They become incompetent because they don’t care. They don’t take pride in what they are doing. They don’t care if what they are doing is right or not. This is not the teacher I would want my children to have to see every day.

I know I will have good days and I will have bad days but hopefully, the good days outweigh the bad. Those good days make all the bad days worthwhile. I will learn from my bad days and they become learning opportunities instead of failures.

My students will show appreciation and that will warm my heart. These simple words of appreciation can quickly make me feel happy.

The smile on my students faces when they finally understand something that they struggled with is enough to make me feel happy.

These happy times help me get through the rough patches.

What makes you happy in your classroom? Please share.

Photo by Evelyn on Unsplash

C is for Creative

During this holiday season, I thought it would be fun to use the word Christmas and apply it to education.

Today’s letter is C and C stands for creative.

I love to make creative lessons about different topics. There are many lessons that can be found online about almost any topic. Some of these lesson plans are free and some are for a small fee. Yet, I know that any lesson plan that I use, I’m going to have to adapt it to my own students. All students are uniquely different, so it is impossible to write a lesson plan that will fit every single classroom. Sometimes I even take a couple of plans and mash them together to fit the needs of my students. This calls for creativity.

I like to make sure that all of my lessons include activities that fit the learning styles of all of my students. Some are visual learners, some are auditory learners, and some are tactile-kinesthetic learners.

After reading sample lesson plans, I know what will and won’t work for my students. If I want to keep the objective, I have to be creative in thinking of activities that will work for some of my students. Some of my students may have a texture sensitivity so I don’t want to require them to do something that they would have to touch.

I like to be creative and come up with a sort of menu for my students with a list of different activities. They can choose from the menu and I may require them to do a certain amount of activities off of the menu.

Some of the activities can be vague enough so that the students are challenged to be creative. This is a lot of fun and it is interesting to see what the students end up creating. Some of their creations are better than anything that I could come up with.

What would C stand for in your class? Please share.

Photo by Evelyn on Unsplash