I chose this chapter because of its title, "Simplify your Teaching Life". I hear that and automatically think teaching and a simplified life don't go together. Teaching involves many students on different levels with different strengths and weaknesses with different attitudes, home lives, and experiences. How can you simplify a job that involves so much diversity?? Also, teaching does involve more than just teaching and takes up a lot of extra time outside of the normal work day. Teachers work at least 12 hours a day during the week and that doesn't include weekends. How can it be simplified? This statement from the chapter is so true: "None of this is possible if we're constantly exhausted from an overstuffed curriculum and have no time to collaborate, reflect, and renew ourselves". That is so true. As a teacher, we need time to talk and work things through so we can be the best teachers we can be (feel the success of our labor) without having more put on our plate that drags our enthusiasm down. Think about what we are wanting for our kids today in school; an environment where students work together to solve problems and feel successful. I believe it needs to be true for teachers as well.
One thing I do believe is that there isn't one right way to teach. In this chapter it says that the best way to teach depends on the students you are teaching. Exactly. All classrooms can't be taught the same things in the same way. Teachers have to take what needs to be taught and present it the best way possible to the students they have. I have been teaching for 18 years, and I always find myself asking if I am doing it right. Should I be doing what another fourth grade teacher is doing instead of what I am doing? I need to not worry about am I doing this right, but am I doing what my kids need to be successful. What works in one classroom, won't work in them all because the students (and teachers) are different.
"We need to get back to the basics of what really matter in teaching and learning". We have to remember in the end what truly matters: educating our future and making them all lifelong learners.
In the search for the simplified method of teaching, we have found the beauty of the independent reading and writing time. This is something that really does not require much preparation of copies and plans and bells and whistles. It requires time and attention and guidance as instruction. We are letting the student do the work in selecting the materials, doing the reading, then we just need to be there for them to provide the support to get them to where they need to go. We have to trust our instincts as readers and teachers as we meet them where they are and simply help them along the way.
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