Shayna Miller Post #5: Routman Ch.4 (Teach with a Sense of Urgency)

The students in my room are already lacking certain skills that cause them to function below grade level in ELA or math. The urgency is certainly there in special education, but Routman describes how to appropriately respond to this urgency. Teachers should not simply rush through stacks of material to cover more content and hope something sticks. Teaching with a sense of urgency is ultimately about using every second of instruction wisely. As teachers, it is our responsibility to make educated and informed decisions about our instruction. Consciously making this effort in hopes of providing our students with the best education is teaching with a sense of urgency. A great exercise Routman used is examining your beliefs about teaching by listing what you actually practice. It is easy to make a perfect list of all of these wonderful strategies and practices you believe you should be using in your classroom, but it does not mean one bit unless you actually put it to practice. Listing practices you actually use in your classroom provides a more true picture of your beliefs about teaching than any paper could ever demonstrate.