Blog Post #9

Mr. Joe McClung

In the first part of Mr. McClung's post What I Learned This Year- Volume 4, he explained his relationship with his peers. During the year he claims that he made a junior high mistake and constantly worried about what his peers thought about him as an educator. He has only ever worried about the opinions of his students and superiors. Due to his mistake, he constantly worried about his peer's opinions.

Later in the year he finally learned how to cope with his peers. He finally decided that he can't change what kind of teacher he is, but to continue how he educates because it is what made get as far as he has. He further explains that worrying about what adults thinks has never gotten him anywhere and that he needs to focus on his kids and make sure that they enjoy class. His number one rule is are the kids having fun? Mr. McClung also states that as long as he remembers who he works for he can never go down the wrong path.

Mr. McClung brings up a very important issue and that is peer pressure. Students and adolescences are not the only ones who experience peer pressure. Teachers experience this problem too! I believe that Mr. McClung's view on this issue provides me with a way to deal with this when I start teaching. If my students are enjoying my class, having fun and learning and my superiors think I am doing a good job, then what my peers think is irrelevant.

In the second part of his post, he explains that he learned that you have to challenge yourself to be relevant and a great teacher. For the past three years he taught the same subject, social studies and Arkansas history. He noticed that he was becoming to comfortable with the subject and wasn't teaching well. He learned that you can't become too comfortable as a teacher because you start to get lazy and your lessons will lack spontaneity. Luckily he was given the opportunity to teach a different subject to a different grade. He said that the only way to solve this situation is to challenge yourself to become a better teacher.

I would hate to become that boring teacher who has nothing interesting to say. I have experienced those types of teachers throughout high school and even now in college. I dread going to those classes. The only way to become a great teacher is to challenge yourself to teach in a new way. Yes it involves work, but it is an educators duty to make sure that your students get the best of the best.

What I Learned This Year (2010-11)

In his post What I Have Learned This Year (2010-11) he hits a lot of issues that comes with teaching. He claims as a teacher that a lot of people pleasing takes place. This can happen so much you forget your main focus and that is your students. The center of a teacher's world should be the students and not adults. Another issue is change. A lot of teachers are not keen to change and try to avoid it at all possible. Mr. McClung believes fully in being the best you can be and he does this by going to Professional Development sessions. Most of the teachers he works with hates going to these sessions. He gets excited about the new ideas that these sessions gives him. However, there are teachers who never give ideas any light. He argues that don't let these teachers get get you down and that it is ok to be excited about new things. Stay positive. Mr. McClung states "if you are planning on being true to yourself and not falling in line with the rest of the crowd then you cannot be afraid to be an outsider." Don't conform to others because it is the acceptable thing to do. You want to eat with your students? Go right ahead! Mr. McClung also argues that don't do the work for them. The only way they will perfect and perform the necessary skills is to let them do the work and figure it out. He also stated don't get comfortable.

One thing that really stuck out to me is his argument of being true to yourself. I love the fact that he eats lunch with his students and builds a real connection with them through blogging and other medias. It's ok to be an outsider. I was never that social in high school. I had my small group of friends but even then I didn't conform to their ideas. It's not our goal to be approved by fellow teachers but our goal is to establish a learning relationship with our students and help them to succeed. A way to do this is not to spoon feed the information to the students. You have to let them fail in order to learn. In high school I had a band teacher who hated spoon feeding information. He believed that it was our responsibility to learn the information or this case the music. It was a great lesson that I learned and that I strongly believe in today.