What advice can you give to educators who are worried about teaching this coming school year? Teaching is exhilarating, fast-paced, rewarding and an essential role in society. It can also be stressful, daunting and even scary at times. Try to remain optimistic this year and trust that decision makers are working for everyone’s best interests. We can survive and thrive this year but only together as a united team. Consider diving deep into Microsoft Teams, Minecraft and Flipgrid as those tools represent the future of learning and the solutions for many of today’s challenges. Other closing thoughts? When I started teaching I was told “Don’t smile until Christmas and you’ll be fine” by a few colleagues. This was the suggested approach to managing a classroom filled with students. I had read Harry Wong’s First Days of School book which did little to contradict this despite being regarded as the holy grail of
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Brilliant Labs Magazine Revue Labos Créatifs
advice for young teachers. I think both my colleagues and Mr. Wong had minimized how important positive relationships are between educators and their students. My advice to younger teachers would be to employ your sense of humour, really listen to your students’ interests and try to fit your curriculum to those interests. It’s okay to do a project on horses while adding countless math outcomes and you don’t have to do a math project that just happens to talk about horses for example. Whatever you do, give it a realworld purpose and respectfully and humbly join your students in the learning.
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Employ your sense of humour, apply real-world purpose to projects and respectfully & humbly join your students in the learning process. Don’t forget to listen! They will be more engaged if your curriculum fits their interests.
