Many times, the things I plan out doesn’t happen because an obstacle is thrown in my way. When I want to go hiking, it rains, and my family doesn’t like to hike in the rain. When I want to cook something specific, I find out that I don’t have all of the ingredients. When I want to do an outside activity, it ends up being too cold to do it. When these things happen, it is time to find an alternative.
Recently my treadmill had to be repaired but until the new part arrived, I could not use the treadmill. It would have been so easy to say that I just wouldn’t exercise. Instead, I looked for an alternative and found these Leslie Sansone Walk at Home videos. I was able to follow the video every day until my treadmill was repaired. I found out that I actually use different muscles while following the video. Now I plan to incorporate the video into my exercise program each week. If my treadmill had not broken, I would never have looked for an alternative.
Sometimes, having to look for an alternative is not a bad thing. It can keep you from getting in a rut. It keeps you from just staying with the same thing. I am learning that when losing weight, you tend to get into plateaus where your weight stays the same. It takes doing something different to shake up your metabolism and start the weight loss again. Doing these walking videos has done it for me. Suddenly I’m losing weight again.
It is so easy to get into a rut in the classroom. I like to teach in the same way and teach the same lessons that I’ve taught over the past few years because I know they work. Now I see that I need to spice up my lessons. I can’t keep teaching the same things the same way because my enthusiasm level is not the same as when I first taught the lesson. I can find a new way to introduce the topic or find a speaker to come in and talk to the class. I need to figure out a way to introduce other new activities. I might need to change up how I assess the student’s mastery of the concepts. By introducing some new aspect into the lesson, it makes it different and possibly better. I need to keep striving to make every lesson a little better than the last time I taught it.
With the availability of resources online and having a great network with other educators, it is easy to ask others for ideas. I love to toss out a topic and ask for advice for some activities to go with the topic. Many are ideas that I’ve never thought about. I love my educator network!
Do you spice up your lessons? How do you do this? Please share.
Original photo by Pat Hensley
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